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GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

FROM AN AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW 



BOOKS BY PRICE COLLIER 

Published by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



Germany and the Germans . . net $1.50 

The West in the East net 1.50 

England and the English . . . net 1.50 



Germany and the Germans 

FROM 

AN AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW 



BY 

PRICE COLLIER 

// 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1914 



M OUNT PLLA Q ANT OnANQH- 

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Copyright, 1913, by 
Charles Scribner's Sons 



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SEPT. lO. 1940 






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CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Introduction ix 

I. The Cradle of Modern Germany . i 

II. Frederick the Great to Bismarck. 38 

III. The Indiscreet 86 

IV. German Political Parties and the 

Press ........ 127 

V. Berlin 173 

VI. " A Land of Damned Professors ". 227 

VII. The Distaff Side 276 

VIII. " Ohne Armee kein Deutsch- 

land" 338 

IX. German Problems . . . . . 381 

X. " From Envy, Hatred, and Mal- 
ice " 434 

XL Conclusion . . . ,., . . . 480 



INTRODUCTION 

The first printed suggestion that America should 
be called America came from a German. Martin 
Waldseemiiller, of Freiburg, in his Cosmo graphic? 
Introductio, published in 1507, wrote: "I do not 
see why any one may justly forbid it to be named 
after Americus, its discoverer, a man of sagacious 
mind, Amerige, that is the land of Americus or Am- 
erica, since both Europe and Asia derived their 
names from women. 

The first complete ship-load of Germans left 
Gravesend July the 24th, 1683, and arrived in Phil- 
adelphia October the 6th, 1683. They settled in 
Germantown, or, as it was then called, on account 
of the poverty of the settlers, Armentown. 

Up to within the last few years the majority of 
our settlers have been Teutonic in blood and Protes- 
tant in religion. The English, Dutch, Swedes, Ger- 
mans, Scotch-Irish, who settled in America, were 
all, less than two thousand years ago, one Germanic 
race from the country surrounding the North Sea. 

Since 1820 more than 5,200,000 Germans have 
settled in America. This immigration of Germans 
has practically ceased, and it is a serious loss to 

ix 



INTRODUCTION 

America, for it has been replaced by a much less de- 
sirable type of settler. In 1882 western Europe 
sent us 563.174 settlers, or 87 per cent., while south- 
ern and eastern Europe and Asiatic Turkey sent 
83,637, or 13 per cent. In 1905 western Europe 
sent 215,863, or 21.7 per cent., and southern and 
eastern Europe and Asiatic Turkey, 808,856, or 
78.9 per cent, of our new population. In 1910 there 
were 8,282,618 white persons of German origin in 
the United States; 2,501,181 were born in Ger- 
many; 3,911,847 were born in the United States, 
both of whose parents were born in Germany; 1,- 
869,590 were born in the United States, one parent 
born in the United States and one in Germany. 

Not only have we been enriched by this mass of 
sober and industrious people in the past, but Peter 
Muhlenberg, Christopher Ludwig, Steuben, John 
Kalb, George Herkimer, and later Francis Lieber, 
Carl Schurz, Sigel, Osterhaus, Abraham Jacobi, 
Herman Ridder, Oswald Ottendorfer, Adolphus 
Busch, Isidor, Nathan, and Oscar Straus, Jacob 
Schiff, Otto Kahn, Frederick Weyerheuser, Charles 
P. Steinmetz, Claus Spreckels, Hugo Miinsterberg, 
and a catalogue of others, have been leaders in fi- 
nance, in industry, in war, in politics, in educational 
and philanthropic enterprises, and in patriotism. 

The framework of our republican institutions, as 
I have tried to outline in this volume, came from 

x 



INTRODUCTION 

the "Woods of Germany." Professor H. A. L. 
Fisher, of Oxford, writes : " European republican- 
ism, which ever since the French Revolution has 
been in the main a phenomenon of the Latin races, 
was a creature of Teutonic civilization in the age 
of the sea-beggars and the Roundheads. The half- 
Latin city of Geneva was the source of that stream 
of democratic opinion in church and state, which, 
flowing to England under Queen Elizabeth, was 
repelled by persecution to Holland, and thence di- 
rected to the continent of North America." 

In these later days Goethe, in a letter to Ecker- 
mann, prophesied the building of the Panama Canal 
by the Americans, and also the prodigious growth 
of the United States toward the West. 

In a private collection in New York, is an auto- 
graph letter of George Washington to Frederick the 
Great, asking that Frederick should use his influence 
to protect that French friend of America, Lafayette. 

In Schiller's house in Weimar there still hangs an 
engraving of the battle of Bunker Hill, by Muller, 
a German, and a friend of the poet. 

Bismark's intimate friend as a student at Got- 
tingen, and the man of whom he spoke with warm 
affection all his life, was the American historian 
Motley. 

The German soldiers in our Civil War were num- 
bered by the thousands. We have many ties with 

xi 



INTRODUCTION 

Germany, quite enough, indeed, to make a bare 
enumeration of them a sufficient introduction to 
this volume. 

On more than one occasion of late I have been 
introduced in places, and to persons, where a slight 
picture of what I was to meet when the doors were 
thrown open was of great help to me. I was told 
beforehand something of the history, traditions, the 
forms and ceremonies, and even something of the 
weaknesses and peculiarities of the society, the per- 
sons, and the personages. I am not so wise a guide 
as some of my sponsors have been, but it is some- 
thing of the kind that I have wished and planned to 
do for my countrymen. I have tried to make this 
book, not a guidebook, certainly not a history; 
rather, in the words of Bacon, " grains of salt, 
which will rather give an appetite than offend with 
satiety, a sketch, in short, of what is on the other 
side of the great doors when the announcer speaks 
your name and you enter Germany. 



xu 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

FROM AN AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW 

I 

THE CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 

EIGHTY-ONE years before the discovery of 
America, seventy-two years before Luther 
was born, and forty-one years before the dis- 
covery of printing, in the year 141 1, the Emperor 
Sigismund, the betrayer of Huss, transferred the 
Mark of Brandenburg to his faithful vassal and 
cousin, Frederick, sixth Burgrave of Nuremberg. 
Nuremberg was at one time one of the great trad- 
ing towns between Germany, Venice, and the 
East, and the home later of Hans Sachs. Freder- 
ick was the lineal descendant of Conrad of Hohen- 
zollern, the first Burgrave of Nuremberg, who lived 
in the days of Frederick Barbarossa (1152-1189) ; 
and this Conrad is the twenty-fifth lineal ancestor 
of Emperor William II of Germany. It is inter- 
esting to remember in this connection that when 
we count back our progenitors to the twenty-first 
generation, they number something over two mil- 
lions. When we trace an ancestry so far, therefore, 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

we must know something of the multitude from 
which the individual is descended, if we are to 
gather anything of value concerning his racial char- 
acteristics. The solace of all genealogical investi- 
gation is the infallible discovery, that the greatest 
among us began in a small way. 

If you paddle up the Elbe and the Havel from 
Hamburg to Potsdam, you will find yourself in the 
territory conquered from the heathen Wends in the 
days of Henry I, the Fowler (918-935), which 
was the cradle of what is now the German Empire. 

The Emperor Sigismund, who was often em- 
barrassed financially by reason of his wars and 
journey ings, had borrowed some four hundred 
thousand gold florins from Frederick, and it was 
in settlement of this debt that he mortgaged the 
territory of Brandenburg, and on the 8th of April, 
141 7, the ceremony of enfeoffment was performed 
at Constance, by which the House of Hohenzol- 
lern became possessed of this territory, and was 
thereafter included among the great electorates 
having a vote in the election of the Emperor of the 
Holy Roman Empire. 

It w r as Henricus Auceps, or Henry the Fowler, 
(so called because the envoys sent to offer him the 
crown, found him on his estates in the Hartz 
Mountains among his falcons), who fought off the 
Danes in the northwest, and the Slavonians, or 
Wends, in the northeast, and the Hungarians in 
the southeast, and established frontier posts or 
marks for permanent protection against their rav- 
ages. These marks, or marches, which were bound- 

2 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 

ary lines, were governed by markgrafs or mar- 
quises, and finally gave the name of marks to the 
territory itself. The word is historically familiar 
from its still later use in noting the old boundaries 
between England and Scotland, and England and 
Wales, which are still called marks. 

Henry the Fowler was also called Henry " the 
City Builder." After the death of the last of the 
Charlemagne line of rulers, the Franks elected Con- 
rad, Duke of Franconia, to succeed to the throne, 
and he on his death-bed advised his people to choose 
Henry of Saxony to succeed, for the times were 
stormy and the country needed a strong ruler. The 
Hungarians in the southeast, and the Wends, the 
old Slavonic population of Poland, were pillaging 
and harrying more and more successfully, and the 
more successfully the more impudently. Henry be- 
gan the building of strong-walled, deep-moated 
cities along his frontier, and made one, drawn by 
lot, out of every ten families of the countryside, go 
to live in these fortified towns. Their rulers were 
burgraves, or city counts. Titles now so largely 
ornamental were then descriptive of duties and re- 
sponsibilities. 

In the light of their future greatness, it is well 
to take note of these two frontier counties, or 
marches. The first, called the Northern March, or 
March of Brandenburg, was the religious centre of 
the Slavs, and was situated in the midst of forests 
and marshes just beyond the Elbe. This March of 
Brandenburg was won from the Slavs in the first 
instance by the Saxons and Franks of the Saxon 

3 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

plain. When the burgrave, Frederick of Hohen- 
zollern, came to take possession of his new territory- 
he was received with the jesting remark : " Were 
it to rain burgraves for a whole year, we should not 
allow them to grow in the march." But Frederick's 
soldiers and money, and his Nuremberg jewels, as 
his cannon were called, ended by gaining complete 
control, a control in more powerful hands to-day 
than ever before. 

The second, called the Eastern or Austrian 
March, was situated in the basin of the Danube. 
These two great states were formed in lands that 
had ceased to be German and had become Slav or 
Finnish territory. The fighting appetite of the Ger- 
man tribes, and the spirit of chivalry later, which 
had drawn men in other days in France to the 
East, in Spain against the Moors, in Normandy 
against England, were offered an opportunity and 
an outlet in Germany, by forays and fighting against 
the Finns and Slavs. 

Out of the conquest and settlement of these ter- 
ritories grew, what we know to-day, as the German 
Empire and the Austrian Empire. Out of their 
margraves, who were at first sentinel officers guard- 
ing the outer boundaries of the empire, and mere 
nominees of the Emperor, have developed the Em- 
peror of Germany and the Emperor of Austria, the 
one ruling over the most powerful nation, the other 
the head of the most exclusive court, in Europe. 

When a man becomes a power in the world, these 
days, our first impulse is to ask about his ancestry. 
Who were his father and his mother ; what and who 

4 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 

were his grandfathers and grandmothers, and who 
were their forebears. Where did they come from, 
what was the climate ; did they live by the sea, or in 
the mountains, or in the plains. We are at once hot 
on the trail of his success. Be he an American, we 
wish to know whether his people came from Hol- 
land, from France, from England, or from Bel- 
gium; where did they settle, in New England, in 
New York, or in the South. We no longer accept 
ability as a miracle, but investigate it as an evolu- 
tion. If the man be great enough, cities vie with 
each other to clairri him as their child ; he acquires 
an Homeric versatility in cradles. 

Whatever one may think of William II of Ger- 
many, he is just now the predominating figure in 
Europe, if not in the world. This must be our ex- 
cuse for a word or two concerning the race from 
which came his twenty-fifth lineal ancestor. 

It is exactly five hundred years since his present 
empire was founded in the sandy plains about the 
Elbe, and a thousand years before that brings us to 
the dim dawn of any historical knowledge what- 
ever about the Germans. When the Cimbrians and 
Teutonians came into contact with the Romans, in 
113 B. C., is the beginning of all things for these 
people. In that year the inhabitants of the north 
of Italy awoke one morning to find a swarm of 
blue-eyed, light-haired, long-limbed strangers com- 
ing down from the Alps upon them. The younger 
and more light-hearted warriors came tobogganing 
down the snow-covered mountain-sides on their 
shields. They had been crowded out of what is now 

5 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Switzerland, and called themselves, though they 
were much alike in appearance, the Cimbri and the 
Teutones. They defeated the Roman armies sent 
against them, and, turning to the south and west, 
went on their way along the north shores of the 
Mediterranean into what is now France. They had 
no history of their own. Tacitus writes that they 
could neither read nor write : " Literarum secreta 
viri pariter ac feminae ignorant." Very little is to 
be found concerning them in the Roman writers. 
The books of Pliny which treated of this time are 
lost. It was toward the middle of the century be- 
fore Christ that Caesar advanced to the frontier of 
what may be called Germany. He met and con- 
quered there these men of the blood who were to 
conquer Rome, and to carry on the name under the 
title of the Holy Roman Empire. Caesar met the 
ancestors of those who were to be Caesars, and with 
an eye on Roman politics, wrote the " Commen- 
taries," which were really autobiographical mes- 
sages, with the Germans as a text and an excuse. 

Tacitus, born just about one hundred years after 
the death of Caesar, and who had access to the lost 
works of Pliny, was a moralist historian and a 
warm friend of the Germans. Over their shoulders 
he rapped the manners and morals of his own 
countrymen. " Vice is not treated by the Germans " 
(German, the etymologists say, is composed of Ger, 
meaning spear or lance, and Man, meaning chief or 
lord; Deutsch, or Tentsch, comes from the Gothic 
word Thiudu, meaning nation, and a Deutscher, or 
Teutscher, meant one belonging to the nation), he 

6 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 

tells his countrymen, " as a subject of raillery, nor 
is the profligacy of corrupting and being corrupted 
called the fashion of the age." With Rooseveltian 
enthusiasm he writes that the Germans consider it 
a crime " to set limits to population, by rearing up 
only a certain number of children and destroying 
the rest" 

The republicanism of Europe and America had 
its roots in this Teutonic civilization. " No man 
dictates to the assembly ; he may persuade but can- 
not command. When anything is advanced not 
agreeable to the people, they reject it with a general 
murmur. If the proposition pleases, they brandish 
their javelins. This is their highest and most hon- 
orable mark of applause; they assent in a military 
manner, and praise by the sound of their arms," 
continues our author. 

The great historian of the Roman historians, and 
of Rome, Gibbon, lends his authority to this praise 
of Tacitus in the sentence : " The most civilized na- 
tions of modern Europe issued from the woods of 
Germany; and in the rude institutions of those bar- 
barians we may still distinguish the original prin- 
ciples of our present laws and manners." 

Rome, which was not only a city, a nation, an 
empire, but a religion; Rome, which replied to a 
suggestion that the people of Latium should be ad- 
mitted to citizenship, " Thou hast heard, O Jupiter, 
the impious words that have come from this man's 
mouth. Canst thou tolerate, O Jupiter, that a for- 
eigner should come to sit in the sacred temple as a 
senator, as a consul?" Rome welcomed later the 

7 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

barbarians from the woods of Germany not only as 
citizens and consuls, but as emperors; and their de- 
scendants rule the world. 

It was no Capuan training that finally distilled 
itself in a Charlemagne, an Otho, a Luther, a Fred- 
erick the Great, and a Bismarck; in an Alfred, a 
William the Conqueror, a Cromwell, a Clive, a 
Rhodes, or a Gordon ; in a Washington, a Lincoln, 
a Grant, a Jackson, and a Lee. 

Beyond the certified beyond, we see dimly through 
the mists of history, hosts of men marching, ever 
marching from the east, spreading some toward 
Norway and Sweden, some skirting the Baltic Sea 
to the south; driving their cattle before them, and 
learning the arts of peace and war, and self-govern- 
ment, from the harsh school-masters of pressing 
needs and tyrannical circumstances, the only teach- 
ers that confer degrees of permanent value. They 
become fishermen and small landholders in Sweden, 
Norway, and Denmark. " Jeudi," or Jupiter's day, 
becomes their god Thor's day, or Thursday; 
" Mardi," or Mars' s day, is their Tiu's day, or Tues- 
day; " Mercredi," or Mercury's day, is Odin's or 
Woden's day, or Wednesday. 

These men trained to solitude in small bands, ow- 
ing to the geographical exigencies of their northern 
country, become the founders of the particularist 
or individualistic nations, Great Britain and the 
United States among others. Those who had gone 
south, driven by pressure from behind, follow the 
Danube to the north and west, find the Rhine, and 
push on into what is now southwestern Europe. 

8 



CRADLE GF MODERN GERMANY 

It is worth noting that the Rhine and the Danube 
have their sources near together, and form a line 
of water from the North Sea to the Black Sea, a 
significant line in Europe from the beginning down 
to this day. This line of water divides not only- 
lands but nations, manners, customs, and even 
speech, and what we call the North, and what we 
call the South, may be said to be, with negligible ex- 
ceptions, what is north and what is south of those 
two rivers. It is and always has been the Mason 
and Dixon's line of Europe. 

All of these peoples mould their institutions,, from 
the habits and customs forced upon them by their 
surroundings. The members of the tribe of the 
Suevi, now Swabians, were not allowed to hold 
fixed landed possessions, but were forced to ex- 
change with each other from time to time, so that no 
one should become wedded to the soil and grow rich 
thereby. Readers of history will remember, that 
Lycurgus attempted similar legislation among the 
Spartans, hoping thus to keep them simple and 
hardy, and fit for war. 

How many hundreds of years, these various 
tribes were working out their rude political and do- 
mestic laws, no man knows. The imaginative his- 
torian pushes his way through the mists, and sees 
that the tribes who lived in the Scandinavian pe- 
ninsula were forced by their cramped territory to 
become fishermen and sailors, and cultivators of 
small areas of land, accustomed therefore to rule 
themselves in small groups, and hence independent 
and markedly individualist. Such historians divide 

9 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

even these rude tribes sharply between the patri- 
archal and the particularist. The particularist com- 
mune developed from the estate which was self- 
sufficient, isolated, and independent. When they 
were associated together it was for special and lim- 
ited purposes, so that independence might be in- 
fringed upon to the least possible extent. The patri- 
archal commune, on the other hand, proceeded from 
the communal family which provided everything 
for everybody. It was a general and compulsory 
partnership, monopolizing every kind of business 
that might arise. The particularist group then, and 
their moral and political descendants now, strive to 
organize public authority, and public life in such a 
way, that they are distinctly subordinate to private 
and individual independence. In the one the Em- 
peror is the father of the family — the Russian Em- 
peror is still called " Little Father " — the indepen- 
dence of each member of the family is swallowed 
up in the complete authority of the head of the na- 
tional family; in the other the president, or consti- 
tutional king, is the executive servant of indepen- 
dent citizens, to whom he owes as much allegiance 
as they owe to him. 

In Saxony, to-day, more than ninety per cent, of 
the agricultural population are independent peasant 
proprietors, and the most admirable and successful 
agriculturists in the world. It is said indeed that the 
Curia Regis, which is the Latinized form of the 
Witenagemote, or assembly of wise men, of the 
Norman and Angevin kings, is the foundation of 
the common law of England, and the common law 

10 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 

of England is the law of more than half of the 
civilized world. 

Whatever the varieties and distinctions of gov- 
ernment anywhere in the world, these two differ- 
ences are the fundamental and basic differences, 
upon which all forms of government have been built 
up and developed. 

In the one, everything so far as possible is begun 
and carried on by individual initiative; in the other 
the state gradually takes control of all enterprise, 
The philosophy of the one is based upon the saying : 
love one another; the political philosophy of the 
other is based upon the assumption that men are 
not brethren, but beasts and mechanical toys, who 
can only be governed by legislation and the police. 
The ideal of the one is the good Samaritan, the ideal 
of the other is the tax-collector. The one depends 
upon the wine and oil of sympathy and human 
brotherhood; the other claims that the right to an 
iron bed in a hospital, and the services of a state- 
paid and indifferent physician, are " refreshing 
fruit," as though sympathy and consideration, which 
are what our weaker brethren most need, could be 
distilled from taxes ! 

It is claimed for these Teutonic tribes, that those 
of them which drifted down from the Scandinavian 
peninsula, are the blood and moral ancestors of the 
particularist nations now in the ascendant in the 
world. The love of independent self-government, 
born of the geographical necessities of the situation, 
stamped itself upon these people so indelibly, that 
Englishmen and Americans bear the seal to this day. 

ii 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

{This change from the patriarchal to the particularist 
family took place in this German race, and took place 
not in those who came from the Baltic plain, but in 
those who came from the Saxon plain. 

The tribes from the Baltic plain, the Goths, for 
example, merely overran the Roman civilization, 
spread over it, drowned it in superior numbers, and 
with superior valor; but it was the Germans from 
the Scandinavian peninsula who conquered Rome, 
and conquered her not by force alone, but by offer- 
ing to the world a superior social and political or- 
ganization. It was to this branch of the German 
race that Varus lost his legions, at the place where 
the Ems has its source, at the foot of the Teuto- 
burger Wald. Charlemagne was of these, and his 
name Karl, or Kerl, or peasant, and the fact that 
his title is the only one in the world compounded of 
greatness and the people in equal measure, is the 
pith of what the Germans brought to leaven the 
whole political world. He made the common man 
so great, that the world has consented to his unique 
and superlative baptismal title of Karl the Great, 
or Carolus Magnus, or Charlemagne. 

The pivotal fact to be remembered is that these 
German tribes saved Europe by their love of liberty, 
and by their virility, from the decadence of an orien- 
talized Rome. Rome, and all Rome meant, was not 
destroyed by these ancestors of ours; on the con- 
trary, they saved what was best worth saving from 
the decline and fall of Rome, and made out of it 
with their own vigorous laws a new world, the 
modern western world. Great Britain, Germany, 

12 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 

and the United States are not descended from 
Egypt, Greece, or Rome, but from " those barbar- 
ians who issued from the woods of Germany/' 

Every school-boy should be taught that Rome 
died of a disease contracted from contact with the 
Oriental, the Syrian, the Jew, the Greek, the riffraff 
of the eastern and southern shores of the Mediter- 
ranean; who, by the way, make up the bulk of the 
immigration into America at this time. Rome was 
an incurable invalid long before the Germans took 
control of the western world and saved it. 

When the Roman Emperor Augustus died, in 14 
A. D., to be succeeded by Tiberius, the Roman Em- 
pire was bounded on the north and east by the 
Rhine, the Danube, the Black Sea and its southern 
territory, and Syria ; by all the known country from 
the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean in northern 
Africa on the south; and by the Atlantic Ocean as 
far north as the river Elbe on the west Five hun- 
dred years later, about 500 A. D., the Barbarians, 
as they were called, had thrust aside the Roman 
Empire. The Saxons controlled the southern and 
eastern coasts of England; the Franks were rulers 
in the whole country from the Loire to the Elbe; 
south of them the Visigoths ruled Spain; Italy and 
all the country to the north and east of the Adri- 
atic, as far as the Danube, were in the hands of the 
Ostrogoths. The Roman Empire had been pushed 
to the eastern end of the Mediterranean, with its 
capital at Constantinople. 

In another three hundred years, or in 800 A. D., 
the king of one of these German tribes revived the 

13 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

title of Roman Emperor, was crowned by the Pope, 
Leo III, and governed Europe as Charlemagne. 
His banner with the double-headed eagle, repre- 
senting the two empires of Germany and Rome, is 
the standard of Austria to-day. Charles Martel, 
who led the West against the East, defeating the 
Arabs in the country between what is now Tours 
and Poitiers, was Charlemagne's grandfather. What 
is now western Europe, became the home and the 
consolidated kingdom of the German tribes who had 
drifted down from the west of the Baltic, and into 
the Saxon plain. They had become masters in this 
territory : after victories over the Mongolian tribes, 
and the Huns under Attila, who had conquered and 
plundered as far as Strasburg, Worms, and Treves, 
and were finally defeated near what is now Chalons; 
after driving off the Arabs under Charles the Ham- 
mer (732) ; after imposing their rule upon the 
Roman Empire, the remains of which cowered in 
Constantinople, where the Ottoman Turk took even 
that from it in 1453, which date may well be taken 
as marking the beginning of modern history, and be- 
came themselves thereafter one of the first powers 
in Christian Europe; a power which is now, in 
1912, the quarrel ground of the Western powers. 

These are Brobdingnagian strides through his- 
tory, to reach the days of Dante, Petrarch, Boccac- 
cio, Chaucer, Froissart, and the first translation of 
the Bible into a vulgar tongue by Wickliffe, to the 
days when Lorenzo de Medici breathed Greece into 
Europe, and the feeling for beauty changed from 
invalidism to convalescence; to the days when can- 

14 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 

non were first used, printing invented, America dis- 
covered, and the man Luther, who gave the Ger- 
mans their present language by his translation of 
the Bible, and who delivered us from papal tyranny, 
born; and Agincourt, and Joan of Arc, are pictur- 
esque and poignant features of the historical land- 
scape. 

These rude German tribes had been welded by 
hardship and warfare, into compact and self-gov- 
erning bodies. These loosely bound masses of men, 
women, and children, straggling down to find room 
and food, are now, in 1400 A. D., France, England, 
Austria, Germany, Scotland, and Spain. The same 
spirit and vigor that roamed the coasts all the way 
from Sweden and Norway to the mouth of the 
Thames, and to the Rhine, the Seine, and to the 
Straits of Gibraltar, are abroad again, landing on 
the shores of America, circumnavigating Africa, 
and bringing home tales of Indians in the west, and 
Indians in the east. This virile stock that had been 
hammered and hewn was now to be polished; and 
in Italy, France, England, and Germany grew up a 
passion for translating the rough mythology, and 
the fierce fancy of the north, into painting, building, 
poetry, and music. 

France, Germany, England, Spain, Holland, Bel- 
gium, Italy, too, grew out of these German tribes, 
who poured down from the territory roughly in- 
cluded between the Rhine, the North Sea, the Oder, 
and the Danube. 

As we know these countries to-day, the definite 
thing about them is their difference. You cross the 

• l 5 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

channel in fifty minutes from Dover to Calais, you 
cross the Rhine in five minutes, and the peoples 
seem thousands of miles apart. " How did it hap- 
pen," asks Voltaire, " that, setting out from the 
same point of departure, the governments of En- 
gland and of France arrived at nearly the same 
time, at results as dissimilar as the constitution of 
Venice is unlike that of Morocco? 

One might ask as well how it happened, that the 
speech of one German invasion mixing itself with 
Latin became French, of another Spanish, of an- 
other Portuguese, of another Italian, of another 
English. These are interesting inquiries, and in re- 
gard to the former it is not difficult to see, that men 
grew to be governed differently, according as the 
geographical exigencies of their homes were differ- 
ent, and as they occupied themselves differently. 

The observant traveller in the United States, may 
see for himself what differences even a few years 
of differing climate, and circumstances, and custom 
will produce. The inhabitants of Charleston, South 
Carolina, are evidently and visibly different from 
those in Davenport, Iowa. Two towns of similar 
size and wealth, Salisbury, Maryland, and Hingham, 
Massachusetts, are almost as different, except in 
speech, and even in speech the accent is perceptibly 
different even to the careless listener, as though 
Salisbury were in the south of France, and Hing- 
ham in the north of Germany. These changes and 
differences are only inexplicable, to those who will 
not see the ethnographical miracles taking place un- 
der their noses. Look at the mongrel crowd on 

16 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 

Fifth Avenue at midday, and remember what was 
there only fifty years ago, and the differentiation 
which has taken place in Europe due to climate, in- 
termarriage, laws, and customs seems easy to trace 
and to explain. 

The fishermen and tillers of the soil in the Scandi- 
navian peninsula, afterward the settlers in the Saxon 
plain and in England, recognized him who ruled 
over their settled place of abode as king; while roam- 
ing bands of fighting men would naturally attach 
themselves to the head of the tribe, as the leader in 
war, and recognize him as king. As late as the 
death of Charlemagne, when his powerful grip re- 
laxed, the tribes of Germans, for they were little 
more even then, fell apart again. Another family 
like that of Pepin arose under Robert the Strong, 
and under Hugue Capet (987) acquired the title of 
Kings of France. The monarchy grew out of the 
weakening of feudalism, and feudalism had been 
the gradual setting, in law and custom, of a way of 
living together, of these detached tribes and clans, 
and their chiefs. 

A powerful warrior was rewarded with a horse, 
a spear ; later, when territory was conquered and the 
tribe settled down, land was given as a reward. 
Land, however, does not die like a horse, or wear 
out and get broken like a spear, and the problem 
arises after the death of the owner, as to who is his 
rightful heir. Does it revert to the giver, the chief 
of the tribe, or does it go to the children of the 
owner ? Some men are strong enough to keep their 
land, to add to it, to control those living upon it, and 

17 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

such a one becomes a feudal ruler in a small way 
himself. He becomes a duke, a dux or leader, a 
count, a margrave, a baron, and a few such power- 
ful men stand by one another against the king. A 
Charlemagne, a William the Conqueror, a Louis 
XIV is strong enough to rule them and keep them in 
order for a time. Out of these conditions grow 
limited monarchies or absolute monarchies and na- 
tional nobilities. 

More than any other one factor, the Crusades 
broke up feudalism. The great noble, impelled by 
a sense of religious duty, or by a love of adventure, 
arms himself and his followers, and starts on years 
of journey ings to the Holy Land. Ready money 
is needed above all else. Lands are mortgaged, 
and the money-lender and the merchant buy lands, 
houses, and eventually power, and buy them cheap. 
The returning nobles find their affairs in disarray, 
their fields cultivated by new owners, towns and 
cities grow up that are as strong or stronger than 
the castle. Before the Crusades no roturier, or mere 
tiller of the soil, could hold a fief, but the demand 
for money was so great that fiefs were bought and 
sold, and Philippe xAxtguste (1180) solved the prob- 
lem by a law, declaring that when the king invested 
a man with a sufficient holding of land or fief, he 
became ipso facto a noble. This is the same com- 
mon-sense policy which led Sir Robert Peel to de- 
clare, that any man with an income of $50,000 a 
year had a right to a peerage. There can be no aris- 
tocracy except of the powerful, which lasts. The 
difference to-day is seen in the puppet nobility of 

18 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 

Austria, Italy, Spain, and Germany as compared 
with the nobility of England, which is not a nobility 
of birth or of tradition, but of the powerful : brewers 
and bankers, and statesmen and lawyers, and leaders 
of public opinion, covering their humble past with 
ermine, and crowning their achievements with coro- 
nets. 

The Crusades brought about as great a shifting 
of the balance of power, as did later the rise of the 
rich merchants, industrials, and nabobs in England. 
As the power of the nobles decreased, the central 
power or the power of the kings increased; increased 
indeed, and lasted, down to the greatest crusade of 
all, when democracy organized itself, and marched 
to the redemption of the rights of man as man, with- 
out regard to his previous condition of servitude. 

During the thousand years between the time when 
we first hear of the German tribes, in 113 B. C, and 
the year 141 1, which marks the beginnings of what 
is now the Prussian monarchy, customs were be- 
coming habits, and habits were becoming laws, and 
the political and social origins of the life of our day 
were being beaten into shape, by the exigencies of 
living together of these tribes in the woods of Ger- 
many. 

There it was that the essence of democracy was 
distilled. Democracy, Demos, the crowd, the people, 
the nation, were already, in the woods of Germany, 
the court of last resort. They growled dissent, and 
they gave assent with the brandishing of their 
weapons, javelins, or ballots. They were called to- 
gether but seldom, and between the meetings of the 

19 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

assembly, the executive work, the judicial work, the 
punishing of offenders, was left to a chosen few; 
left to those who by their control over themselves, 
their control over their families, their control over 
their neighbors, seemed best qualified to exercise the 
delegated control of all. 

The chief aim of their organized government, 
such as it was, seems to have been to leave themselves 
free to go about their private business, with as little 
interference from the demands of public business as 
possible, The chief concern of each one was to se- 
cure his right to mind his own business, under cer- 
tain safeguards provided by all. If those delegated 
to govern became autocratic, or evil-doers, or used 
their power for self -advancement or self -enrich- 
ment, they were speedily brought to book. The 
philosophy of government, then, was to make men 
free to go about their private business. That the 
time might come when politics would be the ab- 
sorbing business of all, dictating the hours and wages 
of men under the earth, and reaching up to the in- 
stitution of a recall for the angel Gabriel, and a 
referendum for the Day of Judgment, was un- 
dreamed of. The chiefs of the clans, the chiefs of 
the tribes, the kings of the Germans, and finally the 
emperors were all elective. The divine right of kings 
is a purely modern development. The descendants 
of these German tribes- in England, elected their 
king in the days of William the Conqueror even, and 
as late as 1689 the Commons of England voted that 
King James had abdicated, and that the throne was 
vacant ! 

20 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 

The so-called mayors of the palace, who became 
kings, were in their day representatives of the land- 
holders, delegates of the people, who advised the 
king and aided in commanding the armies. These 
hereditary mayors of the palace drifted into ever 
greater and greater control, until they became 
hereditary kings. The title was only hereditary, 
however, because it was convenient that one man of 
experience in an office should be succeeded by an- 
other educated to, and familiar with, the same ex- 
periences and duties, and this system of heredity 
continues down to this day in business, and in many 
professions, and so long as there is freedom to oust 
the incompetent, it is a good system. There can 
never be any real progress until the sons take over 
the accumulated wisdom and experience of the 
fathers ; if this is not done, then each one must begin 
for himself all over again. The hereditary principle 
is sound enough, so long as there is freedom of de- 
capitation in cases of tyranny or folly. 

There has continued all through the history of 
those of the blood of the German tribes, whether in 
Germany, England, America, Norway, Sweden, or 
^Denmark, the sound doctrine that ability may at any 
time take the place of the rights of birth. Power, 
or command, or leadership by heredity is looked 
upon as a convenience, not as an unimpeachable 
right. 

Charlemagne (742-814), a descendant of a 
mayor of the palace who had become king by virtue 
of ability, swept all Europe under his sway by reason 
of his transcendent powers as a warrior and ad- 

21 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

ministrator. He did for the first time for Europe 
what Akbar did in his day for India. In forty-five 
years he headed fifty-three campaigns against all 
sorts of enemies. He fought the Saxons, the Danes, 
the Slavs, the Arabs, the Greeks, and the Bretons. 
What is now France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, 
Switzerland, Spain, and most of Italy were under 
his kingship. He was a student, an architect, a 
bridge-builder, though he could neither read nor 
write, and even began a canal which was to connect 
the Danube and the Rhine, and thus the German 
Ocean, with the Black Sea. He is one of many 
monuments to the futility of technical education and 
mere book-learning. 

The Pope, roughly handled, because negligently 
protected, by the Roman emperors, turns to Charle- 
magne, and on Christmas Day (800) places a crown 
upon his head, and proclaims him " Caesar Augus- 
tus " and " Christianissimus Rex." The empire of 
Rome is to be born again with this virile German 
warrior at its head. Just a thousand years later, 
another insists that he has succeeded to the title by 
right of conquest, and gives his baby son the title of 
" King of Rome," and just a thousand years after 
the death of Charlemagne, in 814, Napoleon retires 
to Elba. There is a witchery about Rome even to- 
day, and an emperor still sits imprisoned there, 
claiming for himself the right to rule the spiritual 
and intellectual world : " sedet, eternumque sedebit 
Infelix Theseus." 

Louis, called " the Pious," because the latter part 
of his life was spent in mourning his outrageous be- 

22 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 

trayal, mutilation, and murder of his own nephew, 
whose rivalry he feared, succeeded his father, 
Charlemagne. He was succeeded again by his three 
sons, Lothair, Pepin, and Louis by his first wife, and 
Charles, who was his favorite son, by his second 
wife. He had already divided the great heritage left 
him by Charlemagne between his three sons Lothair, 
Pepin, and Louis; but now he wished to make an- 
other division into four parts, to make room for, 
and to give a kingdom to, his son Charles by his sec- 
ond wife. The three elder sons revolt against their 
father, and his last years are spent in vain attempts 
to reconcile his quarrelsome children. At his death 
war breaks out. Pepin dies, leaving, however, a son 
Pepin to inherit his kingdom of Aquitaine. Louis 
and Charles attempt to take his kingdom from him, 
his uncle Lothair defends him, and at the great bat- 
tle of Fontenay (841) Louis and Charles defeat Lo- 
thair. Lothair gains the adherence of the Saxons, 
and Charles and Louis at the head of their armies 
confirm their alliance, and at Strasburg the two 
armies take the oath of allegiance: the followers 
of Louis took the oath in German, the followers of 
Charles in French, and this oath, the words of which 
are still preserved, is the earliest specimen of the 
French language in existence. 

In 843 another treaty signed at Verdun, between 
the two brothers Lothair and Louis and their half- 
brother Charles, separated for the first time the 
Netherlands, the Rhine country, Burgundy, and 
Italy, which became the portion of Lothair; all Ger- 
many east of this territory, which went to Louis; 

23 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

and all the territory to the west of it, which went to 
Charles. Germany and France, therefore, by the 
Treaty of Verdun in 843, became distinct kingdoms, 
and modern geography in Europe is born. 

From the death of Henry the Fowler, in 936, 
down to the nomination of Frederick I of Bavaria, 
sixth Burgrave of Nuremberg, to be Margrave of 
Brandenburg, in 141 1, the history of the particular 
Germany we are studying is swallowed up in the his- 
tory of these German tribes of central Europe and 
of the Holy Roman Empire. It is in these years of 
the seven Crusades, from 1095 to the last in 1248; 
of Frederick Barbarossa; of the centuries-long 
quarrel between the Welfs, or Guelphs, and the 
Waiblingers, or Ghibellines, which were for years in 
Italy, and are still in Germany, political parties ; of 
the Hanseatic League of the cities to protect com- 
merce from the piracies of a disordered and unruled 
country; of the Dane and the Norman descents upon 
the coasts of France, Germany, and England, and 
of their burning, killing, and carrying into captivity; 
of the Saracens scouring the Mediterranean coasts 
and sacking Rome itself ; of the Wends and Czechs, 
Hungarian bands who dashed in upon the eastern 
frontiers of the now helpless and amorphous empire 
of Charlemagne, all the way from the Baltic to the 
Danube ; of the quarrel between Henry IV and that 
Jupiter Ecclesiasticus, Hildebrand, or Gregory VII, 
who has left us his biography in the single phrase, 
" To go to Canossa " ; of Genghis Khan and his 
Mongol hordes; of the long fight between popes 
and emperors over the right of investiture; of Ru- 

24 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 

dolph of Hapsburg; of the throwing off of their 
allegiance to the Empire of the Kings of Burgundy, 
Poland, Hungary, and Denmark; of the settlement 
of the question of the legal right to elect the emperor 
by Charles IV, who fixed the power in the persons 
of seven rulers: the King of Bohemia, the Count 
Palatine of the Rhine, the Duke of Saxony, the Mar- 
graf of Brandenburg, and the three Archbishops of 
Mayence, Treves, and Cologne; of the independence 
of the great cities of northern Italy; o: Otto the 
Great, whose first wife was a granddaughter of Al- 
fred the Great, and who was the real founder of the 
Holy Roman Empire, in the sense that a German 
prince rules over both Germany and Italy with the 
approval of the Pope, and in the sense that he, a 
duke of Saxony, appropriates the western empire 
(962), goes to Rome, delivers the Pope, subdues 
Italy, and fixes the imperial crown in the name and 
nation of Germany; '. the beginning of that hope 
of a world-church and a world-state, of a universal 
church and a universal kingdom, which took form in 
what is known as the Holy Roman Empire ; of that 
greatest of all forgeries, the Donation of Constan- 
tine by the monk Isidor, discovered and revealed by 
Cardinal Nicolaus, of Cura, in which it is pretended 
that Constantine handed over Rome to the Pope 
and his successors forever, with all the power and 
privileges of the Caesars, and of the effects of this, 
the most successful lie ever told in the world, during 
the seven hundred years it was believed : it is in these 
years of turbulence and change that one must trace 
the threads of history, from the first appearance of 

25 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

the Germans, down to the time when what is now 
Prussia became a frontier post of the empire under 
the rule of a Hohenzollern. 

It is, perhaps, of all periods in history, the most 
interesting to Americans, for then and there our 
civilization was born. Writing of the conquest of 
the British Isles by the Germans, J. R. Green says: 
" What strikes us at once in the new England is 
this, that it was the one purely German nation that 
rose upon the wreck of Rome. In other lands, in 
Spain or Gaul or Italy, though they were equally 
conquered by German peoples, religion, social life, 
administrative order, still remained Roman." The 
roots of our civilization, are to be dug for in those 
days when the German peoples met the imperialism 
and the Christianity of Rome, and absorbed and re- 
newed them. The Roman Empire, tottering on a 
foundation of, it is said, as many as fifty million 
slaves — even a poor man would have ten slaves, a 
rich man ten or twenty thousand — and overrun 
with the mongrel races from Syria, Greece, and 
Africa, and hiding away the remnants of its power 
in the Orient, became in a few centuries an easy 
prey to our ancestors " of the stern blue eyes, the 
ruddy hair, the large and robust bodies. ,, 

" Caerula quis stupuit lumina ? flavam 
Caesariem, et madido torquentem cornua cirro? 
Nempe quod haec illis natura est omnibus una," 

writes Juvenal of their resemblance to one another. 

By the year 1411 long strides had been made 

toward other forms of social, political, religious, 

26 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 

and commercial life, due to the German grip upon 
Europe. Dante, whose grandmother was a Goth, 
was not only a poet but a fighter for freedom, tak- 
ing a leading part in the struggle of the Bianchi 
against the Neri and Pope Boniface, was born in 
1265 and died in 1321; Francis of Assisi, born in 
1 182, not only represented a democratic influence 
in the church, but led the earliest revolt against the 
despotism of money; the movement to found cities 
and to league cities together for the furtherance of 
trade and industry, and thus to give rights to whole 
classes of people hitherto browbeaten by church or 
state or both, began in Italy; and the alliance of 
the cities of the Rhine, and the Hansa League, date 
from the beginning of the thirteenth century; the 
discovery of how to make paper dates from this 
time, and printing followed ; the revolt of the Al- 
bigenses against priestly dominance which drenched 
the south of France in blood began in the twelfth 
century; slavery disappeared except in Spain; Wy- 
cliffe, born in 1324, translated the Gospels, threw 
off his allegiance to the papacy, and suffered the 
cheap vengeance of having his body exhumed and 
its ashes scattered in the river Swift; Aquinas 
and Duns Scotus delivered philosophy from the ty- 
ranny of theology; Roger Bacon (12 14) practically 
introduced the study of natural science; Magna 
Charta was signed in 1215; Marco Polo, whose 
statue I have seen among those of the gods, in a 
certain Chinese temple, began his travels in the 
thirteenth century; the university of Bologna was 
founded before 1200 for the untrammelled study 

27 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

of medicine and philosophy; Abelard, who died in 
1 142, represented, to put it pithily, the spirit of 
free inquiry in matters theological, and lectured 
to thousands in Paris. What do these men and 
movements mean? I am wo fully wrong in my 
ethnographical calculations if these things do not 
mean, that the people of whom Tacitus wrote, 
" No man dictates to the assembly ; he may per- 
suade but cannot command," were shaping and 
moulding the life of Europe, with their passionate 
love of individual liberty, with their sturdy in- 
sistence upon the right of men to think and work 
without arbitrary interference. Out of this fur- 
nace came constitutional government in England, 
and republican government in America. We owe 
the origins of our political life to the influence of 
these German tribes, with their love of individual 
freedom and their stern hatred of meddlesome 
rulers, or a meddlesome state or legislature. 

Germany had no literature at this time. When 
Froissart was writing French history, and Joinville 
his delightful chronicles; when Chaucer and Wy- 
cliffe were gayly and gravely making play with the 
monks and priests, Ae only names known in Ger- 
many were those of the mystics, Eckhart and Tau- 
ler. When the time came, however, Germany was 
defiantly individualist in Luther, and Protestantism 
was thoroughly German. It was not from tales of 
the great, not from knighthood, chivalry, or their 
roving singer champions, that German literature 
came ; but from the fables and satires of the people, 
from Hans Sachs and from the Luther translation of 

28 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY] 

the Bible. This is roughly the setting of civiliza- 
tion, in which the first Hohenzollerns found 
themselves when they took over the Mark of 
Brandenburg, in the early years of the fifteen cen- 
tury. 

Here is a list of them, of no great interest in 
themselves, but showing the direct descent down to 
the present time; for from the Peace of Westphalia 
(1648) to the French Revolution the German states 
were without either men or measures, except Fred- 
erick the Great, that call for other than dreary com- 
ment: 

Frederick I of Nuremberg ......... 1417 

Frederick II ...... 1440 

Albert III 1470 

Johann III , ....... . 1476 

Joachim I ..... . 1499 

Joachim II 1535 

Johann George 1571 

Joachim Frederick 1598 

Johann Sigismund of Poland (first Duke of Prussia) . 1608 

George William 1619 

Frederick William (the Great Elector) 1640 

Frederick III, Frederick I of Prussia (crowned first 

King of Prussia in 1701) ....... 1657-1713 

Frederick William I (son of Frederick I of Prus- 
sia) 1688-1740 

Frederick II (the Great) (son of Frederick Wil- 
liam I) 1712-1786 

Frederick William II (son of Augustus William, 

brother of Frederick the Great) .... 1744-1787 
Frederick William III (son of Frederick William 

II) 1770-1&40 

Frederick William IV (son of Frederick William III, 

i795-i86i), reigned 1840-186 I 

William I (son of Frederick William III, brother of 

Frederick William IV, 1797-1888), reigned . 1861-1888 
29 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Frederick III (son of William I, 1831-1888), reigned from 
March 9 to June 15, 1888. 

William II (son of Frederick III and Princess Victoria 
of England), born Jan. ?j y 1859, succeeded Fred- 
erick III in 1888. 

These incidents, names, and dates are mere 
whisps of history. It is only necessary to indicate 
that to articulate this skeleton of history, clothe it 
with flesh, and give it its appropriate arms and 
costumes would entail the putting of all mediaeval 
European history upon a screen, to deliver oneself 
without apology from any such task. It may be 
for this reason that there is no history of Germany 
in the English tongue, that ranks above the ele- 
mentary and the mediocre. There is a masterly and 
scholarly history of the Holy Roman Empire by an 
Englishman, which no student of Germany may 
neglect, but he who would trace the beginnings of 
Germany from 113 B. C. down to the time of the 
Great Elector, 1640, must be his own guide through 
the trackless deserts, of the formation into separate 
nations, of modern Europe. It is even with mis- 
givings that the student picks his way from the 
time of the Great Elector to Bismarck, and to modern 
Germany. 

The Peace of Westphalia, 1648, marks the end of 
the Thirty Years' War, and finds Germany with a 
population reduced from sixteen millions to four 
millions. Famine which drove men and women to 
cannibalism, bands of them being caught cooking 
human bodies in a caldron for food; slaughter that 
drove men to make laws authorizing every man to 
have two wives, and punishing men and women who 

30 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 

became monks and nuns ; lawlessness that bred rov- 
ing bands of murderers, who killed, robbed, and 
even ate their victims, demanded a ruler of no little 
vigor to lead his people back to civic, moral, and 
material health. The Great Elector wrested east 
Prussia from Poland, he defeated and drove off the 
Swedes, whom Louis XIV had drawn into an alli- 
ance against him, he travelled from end to end of 
his country, seeking out the problems of distress 
and remedying them by inducing immigration from 
Holland, Switzerland, and the north, by building 
roads, bridges, schools, and churches, and by en- 
couraging planting, trade, and commerce. He 
built the Frederick William Canal connecting the 
Oder and the Spree, and introduced the potato to 
his countrymen. Germany now produces in nor- 
mal years fifteen hundred million bushels of pota- 
toes. The splendid equestrian statue of the Great 
Elector on the long bridge at Berlin, is a worthy 
monument to the first great Hohenzollern. 

When Charles II of Spain died, Louis XIV, the 
Emperor Leopold I of the Holy Roman Empire, 
and the Elector of Bavaria, all three claimed the 
right to name his successor. In the war that fol- 
lowed and which lasted a dozen years, the Emperor, 
Holland, England, Portugal, the Elector of Han- 
over, and the Elector Frederick III of Branden- 
burg, the son of the Great Elector, were allied 
against France. Frederick, the Elector of Bran- 
denburg, was permitted by the Emperor, in return 
for his services at this time, to assume the title of 
King, and he crowned himself and his wife Sophia 

3i 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Elizabeth, at Konigsberg, King and Queen of 
Prussia, taking the title of Frederick I of Prussia, 
January 18th, 1701. 

This novus homo among sovereigns was now a 
fellow king with the rulers of England, France, 
Denmark, and Sweden, and the only crowned head 
in the empire, except the Emperor himself, and the 
Elector of Saxony, who had been chosen King of 
Poland in 1697. By persistent sycophancy he had 
pushed his way into the inner circle of the crowned. 
Those who have picked social locks these latter days 
by similar sycophancies, by losses at bridge in the 
proper quarter, by suffering sly familiarities to their 
women folk, and by wearing their personal and 
family dignity in sole leather, may know something 
of the humiliating experiences of this new monarch. 
He was a feeble fellow, but his son and successor, 
Frederick William I, " a shrewd but brutal boor," 
so Lord Rosebery calls him, and there could not be 
a better judge, amazed Europe by his taste for col- 
lecting tall soldiers, by his parsimony, his kennel 
manners in the treatment of his family and his sub- 
jects, and leaves a name in history as the first, 
greatest, and the unique collector of human beings 
on a Barnumesque scale. All known collectors of 
birds, beetles, butterflies, and beasts accord him an 
easy supremacy, for his aggregation of colossal 
grenadiers. 

It is temptingly easy to be epigrammatic, perhaps 
witty, at the expense of Frederick William I of 
Prussia. The man, however, who freed the serfs; 
who readjusted the taxes; who insisted upon in- 

32 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 

dustry and honesty among his officials; who pro- 
claimed liberty of conscience and of thought; who 
first put on, to wear for the rest of his life, the 
uniform of his army, and thus made every officer 
proud to wear the uniform himself; and who left 
his son an army of eighty thousand men, thoroughly 
equipped and trained, and an overflowing treasury, 
may not be dismissed merely with anecdotes of his 
eccentric brutality. 

Only the ignorant and the envious, nibble at the 
successes of other men, with vermin teeth and 
venomous tongue. Those people who can never 
praise anything whole-heartedly come by their cau- 
tious censure from an uneasy doubt of their own 
deserving. The contempt of Frederick William I 
for learning and learned men, left him leisure for 
matters of far more importance to his kingdom at 
the time. His habitual roughness to his son was 
due, perhaps, to the fact that there was a curious 
strain of effeminate culture in the man who deified 
Voltaire. Poor Voltaire, who called Shakespeare 
" le sauvage ivre," or to quote him exactly : " On 
croirait que cet ouvrage (Hamlet) est le fruit de 
Timagination d'un sauvage ivre," who said that 
Dante would never be read, and that the comedies 
of Aristophanes were unworthy of presentation in 
a country tavern! One is tempted to believe that 
the father was a man of robuster judgment in such 
matters than the son, whose own rather mediocre 
literary equipment, made him the easy prey of that 
acidulous vestal of literature, Voltaire. However 
that may be, he left a useful and unexpected legacy 

33 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

to his son, provided, indeed, the sinews for the mak- 
ing of a powerful Prussian kingdom. 

March the 31st, 1740, this eccentric miser died, 
to be succeeded by his son, Frederick II, " the 
Great," then twenty-eight years old. Here was a 
surprise indeed. Of these German kings and 
princes in their small dominions it has been written : 
"And these magnates all aped Louis XIV as their 
model. They built huge palaces, as like Versailles 
as their means would permit, and generally beyond 
those limits, with fountains and avenues and dis- 
mally wide paths. Even in our own day a German 
monarch has left, fortunately unfinished, an accu- 
rate Versailles on a damp island in a Bavarian lake. 
In those grandiose structures they cherished a 
blighting etiquette, and led lives as dull as those of 
the aged and torpid carp in their own stew-ponds. 
Then, at the proper season, they would break away 
into the forest and kill game. Moreover, still in 
imitation of their model, they held, as a necessary 
feature in the dreary drama of their existence, 
ponderous dalliances with unattractive mistresses, 
in whom they fondly tried to discern the charms of 
a Montespan or a La Valliere. This monotonous 
programme, sometimes varied by a violent contest 
whether they should occupy a seat with or without 
a back, or with or without arms, represented the 
even tenor of their lives." 

This good stock was evidently lying fallow, and 
humanity is neither dignified nor pleasant in the 
part of fertilizer. Frederick the Great, it should 
be remembered, was a Prussian and for Prussia 

34 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 

only. He cared no more about a united Germany 
than we care for a united America to include Can- 
ada, Mexico, and the Argentine. He cared no more 
for Bavarians and Saxons than for Swedes and 
Frenchmen, and, as we know, he was utterly con- 
temptuous of German literature or the German 
language. He redeemed the shallowness and the 
torpidity of those other mediocre rulers by resisting, 
and resisting successfully, for what must have been 
to him seven very long years, the whole force of 
Austria and some of the lesser German powers, 
with the armies of Russia and France back of them. 

He had a turbulent home life; his father on one 
occasion even attempted to hang him with his own 
hands with the cords of the window curtains, and 
when he fled from home he captured him and pro- 
posed to put him to death as a deserter, and only 
the intervention of the Kings of Poland and Swe- 
den and the Emperor of Germany prevented it. His 
accomplice, however, was summarily and merci- 
lessly put to death before his eyes. There is no 
illustration in all history, of such a successful out- 
come of the rod theory in education, as this of 
Frederick the Great. The father put into practice 
what Wesley preached : " Break their wills be- 
times, whatever it costs; break the will if you would 
not damn the child. Let a child from a year old 
be taught to fear the rod and to cry softly." 

The meanness and cruelty, the parsimony and 
the eccentricities, of the father left the son an army 
of eighty thousand troops, troops as superior to other 
troops in Europe as are the Japanese infantry to- 

35 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

day, to the Manchu guards that pick the weeds in 
the court-yards of the palace at Mukden; and he 
left him, too, a kingdom with no debts and an over- 
flowing treasury. It is seldom that such insane 
vanities leave such a fair estate and an heir with 
such unique abilities for its skilful exploitation. Of 
Frederick's wars against Austria, against France, 
Russia, Saxony, Sweden, and Poland; of his vic- 
tories at Prague, Leuthen, Rossbach, and Zorndorf ; 
of his addition of Silesia and Polish Prussia to his 
kingdom; of his comical literary love affair with 
Voltaire; of his brutal comments upon the reigning 
ladies of Russia and France, which brought upon 
him their bitter hatred; of his restoration and im- 
provement of his country; of his strict personal 
economy and loyalty to his own people, scores of 
volumes have been written. The hero-worshipper, 
Carlyle, and the Jove of reviewers, Macaulay, have 
described him, and many minor scribes besides. 

It is said of his victory of Rossbach, in 1757, 
that then and there began the recreation of Ger- 
many, the revival of her political and intellectual 
life, and union under Prussia and Prussian Kings. 
Frederick the Great deserves this particular en- 
comium; for as Luther freed Germany, and all 
Christendom indeed, from the tyranny of tradi- 
tion, as Lessing freed us from the tyranny of the 
letter, from the second-hand and half-baked Hellen- 
ism of a Racine and a Corneille, so Frederick the 
Great freed his countrymen at last from the puerile 
slavery to French fashions and traditions, which 
had made them self-conscious at home and ridicu- 

36 



CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 

lous abroad. He first made a Prussian proud to be 
a Prussian. 

This last quarter of the eighteenth century in 
Germany saw the death of Lessing in 1781, the 
publication of Kant's " Kritik der Reinen Ver- 
nunft " in the same year, and the death of the 
great Frederick in 1786. These names mark the 
physical and intellectual coming of age of Germany. 
Lessing died misunderstood and feared by the card- 
board literary leaders of his day, men who still 
wrote and thought with the geometrical instruments 
handed them from France; Kant attempted to push 
philosophical inquiry beyond the bounds of human 
experience, and Frederick left Prussia at last not 
ashamed to be Prussia. Napoleon was eighteen 
years old when Frederick died, and he, next to 
Bismarck, did more to bring about German unity 
than any other single force. Unsuccessful Charle- 
magne though he was, he without knowing it blazed 
the political path which led to the crowning of a 
German emperor in the palace at Versailles, less 
than a hundred years after the death of Frederick 
the Great. In 1797 at Montebello, Napoleon said: 
"If the Germanic System did not exist, it would 
be necessary to create it expressly for the conveni- 
ence of France." 



37 



II 

FREDERICK THE GREAT TO 
BISMARCK 

FREDERICK THE GREAT died in 1786, 
leaving Prussia the most formidable mili- 
tary power on the Continent. In financial, 
law, and educational matters he had made his in- 
fluence felt for good. He distributed work-horses 
and seed to his impoverished nobles ; he encouraged 
silk, cotton, and porcelain industries; he built the 
Finow, the Planesche, and Bromberger Canals; he 
placed a tariff on meat, except pork, the habitual 
food of the poor, and spirits and tobacco and coffee 
were added to the salt monopoly; he codified the 
laws, which we shall mention later; he aided the 
common schools, and in his day were built the opera- 
house, library, and university in Berlin, and the 
new palace of Sans Souci at Potsdam. 

Almost exactly one hundred years after the death 
of Frederick the Great, there ended practically, at 
the death of the Emperor William I, in 1888, the 
political career of the man, who with his personally 
manufactured cement of blood and iron, bound Ger- 
many together into a nation. The middle of the 
seventeenth, the middle of the eighteenth, and the 
middle of the nineteenth centuries, with the Great 

38 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 

Elector, Frederick the Great, and Bismarck as the 
central figures, mark the features of the historical 
landscape of Germany as with mile-stones. 

How difficult was the task to bring at last an 
emperor of all Germany to his crowning at Ver- 
sailles, January 18, 1871, and how mighty the 
artificer who accomplished the work, may be learned 
from a glance at the political, geographical, and 
patriotic incoherence of the land that is now the 
German Empire. 

Germany had no definite national policy from the 
death of Frederick the Great till the reign of 
Bismarck began in 1862. Hazy discussions of a con- 
federation of princes, of a Prussian empire, of lines 
of demarcation, of acquisitions of German ter- 
ritory, were the phantoms of a policy, and even 
these were due to the pressure of Prussia. 

The general political torpidity is surprisingly dis- 
played, when one remembers that Goethe (1749- 
1832), who lived through the French Revolution, 
who was thirty-seven years old when Frederick the 
Great died, and who lived through the whole flam- 
ing life of Napoleon, was scarcely more stirred by 
the political features of the time than though he had 
lived in Seringapatam. He was a superlatively 
great man, but he was as parochial in his politics as 
he was amateurish in his science, as he was a mixture 
of the coxcomb and the boor, in his love affairs. 
Lessing, who died in 1781, Klopstock, who died in 

1803, Schiller, who died in 1805, Kant, who died in 

1804, Hegel, who died in 1831, Fichte, who died in 
1814, Wolf, who died in 1824, " Jean Paul " Fried- 

39 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

rich Richter, who died in 1825, Voss, who died in 
1826, Schelling, who died in 1854, the two Schlegels, 
August Wilhelm and Frederick, who died in 1845 
and in 1829, Jacob Grimm, who died in 1863, 
Herder, Wieland, Kotzebue, what a list of names! 
What a blossoming of literary activity! But no 
one of them, these the leaders of thought in Ger- 
many, at the time when the world was approaching 
the birthday of democracy through pain and blood, 
no one of these was especially interested in politics. 
There was theoretical writing about freedom. 
Heine mocked at his countrymen and at the world 
in general, and deified Napoleon, from his French 
mattress, on which he died, in 1856, only fifty-seven 
years old. Fichte ended a course of lectures on 
Duty, with the words : " This course of lectures is 
suspended till the end of the campaign. We shall 
resume if our country become free, or we shall have 
died to regain our liberty. ,, But Fichte neither re- 
sumed nor died ! Herder criticised his countrymen 
for their slavish following of French forms and 
models in their literature, as in their art and social 
life. And well he might thus criticise, when one 
remembers how cramped was the literary vision even 
of such men as Voltaire and Heine. We have al- 
ready mentioned some of Voltaire's literary judg- 
ments in the preceding chapter, and Heine ventured 
to compare Racine to Euripides! No wonder that 
Germany needed schooling in taste, if such were the 
opinions of her advisers. Such literary canons as 
these could only be accepted by minds long inured 
to provincial, literary, and social slavery. 

40 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 

Just as every little princeling of those days in 
Germany took Louis XIV for his model, so every 
literary fledgling looked upon Voltaire as a god, 
and modelled his style upon the stiff and pompous 
verses of the French literary men of that time. 

Not even to-day has Germany escaped from this 
bondage. In Baden three words out of ten that you 
hear are French, and the German wherever he lives 
in Germany still invites you to Mittagessen at eight 
P. M. because he has no word in his own language 
for diner , and must still say anstandiger or gebildeter 
Mensch for gentleman. To make the German even 
a German in speech and ideals and in independence 
has been a colossal task. One wonders, as one pokes 
about in odd corners of Germany even now, whether 
Herder's caustic contempt, and Bismarck's cavalry 
boots, have made every German proud to be a 
German, as now he surely ought to be. The tribal 
feeling still exists there. 

Fichte's lectures on Nationality were suppressed 
and Fichte himself looked upon askance. The 
Schlegels spent a lifetime in giving Germany a 
translation of Shakespeare. Hegel wrote the last 
words of his philosophy to the sound of the guns 
at the battle of Jena. Goethe writes a paragraph 
about his meeting with Napoleon. Metternich, born 
three years before the American Revolution, and 
who died a year before the battle of Bull Run, de- 
clared : " The cause of all the trouble is the attempt 
of a small faction to introduce the sovereignty of 
the people under the guise of a representative 
system." 

4i 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

If this was the attitude of the intellectual nobility 
of the time, what are we to suppose that Messrs. 
Muller and Schultze and Fischer and Kruger, the 
small shop-keepers and others of their ilk, and their 
friends thought? Even forty years later Friedrich 
Hebbel, in 1844, paid a visit to the Industrial Ex- 
position in Paris. He writes in his diary : " Alle 
diese Dinge sind mir nicht allein gleichgiiltig ; sie 
sind mir widerwartig." Germany had not awakened 
even then to any wide popular interest in the world 
that was doing things. As Voltaire phrased it, 
France ruled the land, England the sea, and Ger- 
many the clouds, even as late as the middle of the 
nineteenth century. This is the more worth noting, 
as giving a peg upon which to hang Germany's 
astounding progress since that time. Even as late 
as Bismarck's day he complained of the German: 
" It is as a Prussian, a Hanoverian, a Wurtem- 
berger, a Bavarian, or a Hessian, rather than as a 
German, that he is disposed to give unequivocal proof 
of patriotism." The present ambitious German 
Emperor said, in 1899, at Hamburg: " The sluggish- 
ness shown by the German people in interesting 
themselves in the great questions moving the world, 
and in arriving at a political understanding of those 
questions, has caused me deep anxiety." What kind 
of material had the nation-makers to work with! 
What a long, disappointing task it must have been 
to light these people into a blaze of patriotism ! In 
those days America, though the population of the 
American colonies was only eleven hundred and 
sixty thousand in 1750, talked, wrote, and fought 

42 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 

politics. The outstanding personalities of the time 
Were patriots, soldiers, politicians, not a dreamer 
among them. 

England was so nonchalantly free already, that 
the betting-book at White's Club records that, " Lord 
Glengall bets Lord Yarmouth one hundred guineas 
to five that Buonaparte returns to Paris before Beau 
Brummel returns to London ! " Burke and Pitt, 
and Fox and North, and Canning might look after 
politics ; Hargreaves and Crompton would take care 
to keep English industries to the fore, and Watt, 
and the great canal-builder Brindley, would solve 
the problem of distributing coal; their lordships 
cracked their plovers' eggs, unable to pronounce 
even the name of a single German town or philos- 
opher, and showed their impartial interest, much as 
now they do, in contemporary history, by backing 
their opinions with guineas, with the odds on Caesar 
against the " Beau." 

Weimar was a sunny little corner where poetry 
and philosophy and literature were hatched, well out 
of reach of the political storms of the time. The 
Grand Duke of Sachsen- Weimar-Eisenach with his 
tiny court, his Falstaffian army, his mint and his 
customs-houses, with his well-conducted theatre and 
his suite of litterateurs, was one of three hundred 
rulers in the Germany of that time. 

The Holy Roman Empire, consisting, in Na- 
poleon's time, of Austria, Prussia, and a mass of 
minor states, these' last grouped together under the 
name of the Confederation of the Rhine, and wholly 
under French influence, lasted one thousand eight 

43 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

hundred and fifty-eight years, or from Caesar's 
victory of Pharsalia down to August the 1st, 1806, 
when Napoleon announced to the Diet that he no 
longer recognized it. 

This institution had no political power, was 
merely a theoretical political ring for the theoret- 
ical political conflicts of German agitators and 
dreamers, and was composed of the representatives 
of this tangle of powerless, but vain and self-con- 
scious little states. This Holy Roman Empire, with 
an Austrian at its head, and aided by France, strove 
to prevent the development of a strong German state 
under the leadership of Prussia. After Napoleon's 
day it became a struggle between Prussia and 
Austria. Austria had only eight out of thirty-six 
million German population, while Prussia was 
practically entirely German, and Prussia used her 
army, politics, and commerce to gain control in Ger- 
many. Even to-day Austria-Hungary contains the 
most varied conglomeration of races of any nation 
in the world. Austria has 26,000,000 inhabitants, 
of whom 9,000,000 are Germans, 1,000,000 Italians 
and Rumanians, 6,000,000 Bohemians and Slovacs, 
8,000,000 Poles and Ruthenians, 2,000,000 Slovenes 
and Croatians. Of the 19,000,000 of Hungary there 
are 9,000,000 Magyars, 2,000,000 Germans, 2,500,- 
000 Slovacs and Ruthenians, 3,000,000 Rumanians, 
and nearly 3,000,000 Southern Slavs. 

Weimar was one of the three hundred capitals 
of this limp empire, with tariffs, stamps, coins, 
uniforms, customs, gossip, interests, and a sovereign 
of its own. When Bismarck undertook the unify- 

44 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 

ing of the customs tariffs of Germany, there were 
even then fifteen hundred different tariffs in ex- 
istence ! 

Weimar had its salon, its notables: Goethe, 
Schiller, Wieland, Frau von Stein, Dr. Zimmermann 
as a valued correspondent; its Grand Duke Karl 
August and his consort; Herder, who jealous of the 
renown of Goethe, and piqued at the insufficient con- 
sideration he received, soon departed, to return only 
when the Grand Duchess took him under her wing 
and thus satisfied his morbid pride; its love affair, 
for did not the beautiful Frau von Werthern leave 
her husband, carry out a mock funeral, and, heralded 
as dead, elope to Africa with Herr von Einsiedel? 
But Weimar was as far away from what we now 
agree to look upon as the great events of the day, 
as were Lords Glengall and Yarmouth at White's, 
in Saint James's. 

It requires imagination to put Goethe and Schiller 
and Wieland in the bow window at White's, and 
to place Lords Glengall and Yarmouth in Frau von 
Stein's drawing-room in Weimar ; but the discerning 
eye which can see this picture, knows at a glance 
why England misunderstands Germany and Ger- 
many misunderstands England. For White's is 
White's and Weimar is Weimar, and one is British 
and one is German as much now as then! In the 
one the winner of the Derby is of more importance 
than any philosopher; in the other, philosophers, 
poets, professors, and playwrights are almost as well 
known, as the pedigrees of the yearlings to be sold 
at Newmarket, are known at White's. They still 

45 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

have plover's eggs early in the season at White's, 
and they still recognize the subtle distinction there 
between " port wine " and " port " ; while in Weimar 
nobody, unless it be the duke, even boils his sauer- 
kraut in white wine! 

One could easily write a chapter on Weimar and 
its self-satisfied social and literary activities. There 
were three hundred or more capitals of like com- 
plexion and isolation: some larger, some smaller, 
none perhaps with such a splendid literary setting, 
but all indifferent with the indifference of distant 
relatives who seldom see one another, when the 
French Revolution exploded its bomb at the gates 
of the world's habits of thought. 

No intelligent man ever objected to the French 
Revolution because it stood for human rights, but 
because it led straight to human wrongs. The dream 
was angelic, but the nightmare in which it ended 
was devilish. The French Revolution was the most 
colossal disappointment that humanity has ever had 
to bear. 

More than the demagogue gives us credit for, are 
the great majority of us eager to help our neighbors. 
The trouble is that the demagogue thinks this, the 
most difficult of all things, an easy task. God and 
Nature are harsh when they are training men, and 
we, alas, are soft, hence most of our failures. Cor- 
rection must be given with a rod, not with a sop. 
There lies all the trouble. 

The political and philanthropic wise men were 
setting out for the manger and the babe, their eyes 
on the star, laden with gifts, when they were met 

46 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 

by a whiff of grape-shot from the guns commanded 
by a young Corsican genius. The French Revolu- 
tion found us all sympathetic, but making men of 
equal height by lopping off their heads; making 
them free by giving no one a chance to be free; 
making them fraternal by insisting that all should 
be addressed by the same title of, " citizen," was 
soon seen to be the method of a political nursery. 

It was no fault of the French Revolution that 
it was no revolution at all, in any political sense. 
Men maddened by oppression hit, kick, bite, and 
burn. They are satisfied to shake the burden of 
the moment off their backs, even though the burden 
they take on be of much the same character. " It 
is perfectly possible, to revive even in our own day 
the fiscal tyranny which once left even European 
populations in doubt whether it was worth while 
preserving life by thrift and toil. You have only to 
tempt a portion of the population into temporary 
idleness, by promising them a share in a fictitious 
hoard lying in an imaginary strong-box which is 
supposed to contain all human wealth. You have 
only to take the heart out of those who would will- 
ingly labor and save, by taxing them ad misericor- 
diam for the most laudable philanthropic objects. 
For it makes not the smallest difference to the 
motives of the thrifty and industrious part of man- 
kind whether their fiscal oppressor be an Eastern 
despot, or a feudal baron, or a democratic legisla- 
ture, and whether they are taxed for the benefit 
of a corporation called Society or for the advantage 
of an individual styled King or Lord," writes Sir 

47 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Henry Maine. In short it matters not in the least 
what you baptize oppression, so long as it is oppres- 
sion, or whether you call your tyrant " Jim " or 
" My Lord/' so long as he is a tyrant. Many people 
are slowly awakening to the fact in England and in 
America, that plain citizen " Jim " can be a most 
merciless tyrant in spite of his unpretentious name 
and title. No royal tyrant ever dared to attempt 
to gain his ends by dynamiting innocent people, as 
did the trades-unionists at Los Angeles, or to starve 
a whole population as did the trades-unionists in 
London. We have not escaped tyranny by chang- 
ing its name. The idea of the Contrat Social and 
of all its dilutions since, has been that individuals 
go to make up society, and that society under the 
name of the state must take charge of those in- 
dividuals. The French Revolution was a failure 
because it fell back upon that tiresome and futile 
philosophy of government which had been that of 
Louis XIV. Louis XIV took care of the individual 
units of the state by exploiting them. He was a 
sound enough Socialist in theory. France gained 
nothing of much value along the lines of political 
philosophy. 

Whether it is Louis XIV who says "l'etat c'est 
moi " or the citizens banded together in a state, who 
claim that the functions of the state are to meddle 
with the business of every man, matters little. It 
is the same socialistic philosophy at bottom, and it 
has produced to-day a France of thirty-eight millions 
of people pledged to sterility, one million of whom 
are state officials superintending the affairs of the 

4 8 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 

others at a cost, in salaries alone, of upward of five 
hundred million dollars a year. 

In no political or philosophical sense was the 
French Revolution a revolution at all. It was a 
change of administration and leaders, but not a 
change of political theory. The French Revolution 
put the state in impartial supremacy over all classes 
by destroying exemptions claimed by the nobility and 
the clergy, and thus extended the power of the state. 
The English Revolution without bloodshed reduced 
the power of the state, not for the advantage of any 
class, but for individual liberty and local self-govern- 
ment. We Americans are the political heirs of the 
latter, not of the former, revolution. 

Germany was stirred slightly to hope for freedom, 
but stirred mightily to protest against anarchy later. 
These were the two influences from the French 
Revolution that affected Germany, and they were 
so contradictory that Germany herself was for 
nearly a hundred years in a mixed mood. One 
influence enlivened the theoretical democrat, and 
the other sent the armies of all Europe post-haste to 
save what was left of orderly government in France. 

But Prussia was not what she had been under 
Frederick the Great. Frederick was more Louis 
XIV than Louis XIV himself. The economic and 
political errors of the French Revolution found their 
best practical exponent in Frederick the Great. In 
the introduction to his code of laws we have already 
mentioned are the words : " The head of the state, 
to whom is intrusted the duty of securing public 
welfare, which is the whole aim of society, is 

49 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

authorized to direct and control all the actions of 
individuals toward this end." Further on the same 
code reads : " It is incumbent upon the state to see 
to the feeding, employment, and payment of all 
those who cannot support themselves, and who have 
no claim to the help of the lord of the manor, or 
to the help of the commune : it is necessary to 
provide such persons with work which is suitable 
to their strength and their capacity." 

When Frederick died he left Prussia in the grip 
of this enervating pontifical socialism, which al- 
ways everywhere ends by palsying the individual, 
and through the individual the state, with the blight 
of demagogical and theoretical legislation. The fine 
army grew pallid and without spirit, the citizens lost 
their individual pride, the nation as a whole lost its 
vigor, and when Napoleon marched into Berlin, he 
remarked that the country hardly seemed worth con- 
quering. 

The century from the death of Frederick the 
Great, in 1786, to the death of William the First, 
in 1888, includes, in a convenient period to remem- 
ber: the downfall of Frederick's patriotic edifice; 
the apathy and impotency that followed upon the 
breaking up of the bureaucracy he had welded into 
efficiency; the shuffling of the German states by 
Napoleon as though they were the pack of cards in 
a great political game; a revival of patriotism in 
Prussia after floggings and insults that were past 
bearing; the jealousies and enmities of the various 
states, the betrayal of one by the other, and finally 
the struggle between Austria and Prussia to decide 

50 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 

upon a leader for all Germany; and at last the war 
against France, 1870-71, which was to make it clear 
to the world that Germany had been Prussianized 
into an empire. 

Frederick William II, the nephew of Frederick 
the Great, who succeeded him, was King of Prussia 
from 1786 to 1797. Frederick William III, his son, 
and the husband of the beautiful and patriotic Queen 
Louisa, was King of Prussia from 1797 to 1840. 
Frederick William IV, a loquacious, indiscreet, 
loose-lipped sovereign, of moist intellect and myth- 
ical delusions, was King of Prussia from 1840 to 
J857, when his mental condition made his retire- 
ment necessary, and he was succeeded by his brother, 
Frederick William Ludwig, first as regent, then as 
king in 1861, known to us as that admirable King 
and Emperor, William I, who died in 1888. 

Perhaps the most remarkable characteristic of 
these sovereigns, to those of us who look upon Ger- 
many to-day as autocratically governed in fact and 
by tradition, is their willing surrender to the people, 
on every occasion when the demand has been, even 
as little insistent as the German demand has been. 
In the case of Frederick William IV, his claim, at 
least in words, upon his divine rights as a sovereign 
was the mark of a wavering confidence in himself. 
He was not satisfied with a rational sanction for his 
authority, but was forever assuring his subjects that 
God had pronounced for him; much as men of low 
intelligence attempt to add vigor to their statements 
by an oath. " I hold my crown," he said, " by the 
favor of God, and I am responsible to Him for 

51 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

every hour of my government." Much under the 
influence of the two scholars Niebuhr and Ranke, 
he hated the ideas of the French Revolution, and 
dreamed of an ideal Christian state like that of the 
Middle Ages. He was caricatured by the journals 
of the day, and laughed at by the wits, including 
Heine, and pictured as a king with " Order " on one 
hand, " Counterorder " on the other, and " Dis- 
order " on his forehead. 

Though Frederick William II marched into 
France in 1792, to support the French monarchy, 
neither his army nor his people were prepared or 
fit for this enterprise, and he soon retired, In 1793, 
Prussia joined Russia in a second partition of 
Poland, but in 1795, angry with what was con- 
sidered the double dealing of Austria and Russia, 
Prussia concluded a peace with France, the treaty 
of Basle was signed in 1795, and for ten years 
Prussia practically took no part in the Napoleonic 
wars. 

Napoleon took over the lands on the left bank 
of the Rhine, took away the freedom of forty-eight 
towns, leaving only Hamburg, Bremen, Frankfort, 
Augsburg, and Nuremberg, and in 1803 he took 
Hanover. Later, in 1805, Bavaria, Wiirtemberg, 
and Baden aided Napoleon to fight the alliance 
against him of Austria, England, Russia, and 
Sweden. In that same year the Electors of Wiirtem- 
berg and Bavaria were made kings by Napoleon. 
In 1806 Bavaria, Baden, Wiirtemberg, and Hessen 
seceded from the German Empire, formed them- 
selves into the Confederation of the Rhine, and 

52 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 

acknowledged Napoleon as their protector. In 1806 
Francis II, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, 
resigned, and there was neither an empire nor an 
emperor of Germany, nor was there a Germany of 
united interests. 

In 1806 Frederick William III, driven by the 
grossest insults to his country and to his wife, finally 
declared war against France; there followed the 
battle of Jena, in which the Germans were routed, 
and in that same year Napoleon marched into Berlin 
unopposed. In 1807 the Russian Emperor was 
persuaded to make peace, and Prussia without her 
ally was helpless. The Peace of Tilsit, in July, 1807, 
deprived Prussia of the whole of the territory be- 
tween the Elbe and the Rhine, and this with Bruns- 
wick, Hesse-Cassel, and part of Hanover was 
dubbed the Kingdom of Westphalia, and Napoleon's 
youngest brother Jerome was made king. The 
Polish territory of Prussia was given to the Elector 
of Saxony, who was also rewarded for having de- 
serted Prussia after the battle of Jena by being made 
a king. Prussia was further required to reduce her 
army to forty-two thousand men. 

It is neither a pretty nor an inspiriting story, this 
of the mangling of Germany by Napoleon; of the 
German princes bribed by kingly crowns from the 
hands of an ancestorless Corsican ; but it all goes to 
show how far from any sense of common aims and 
duties, how far from the united Vaterland of to- 
day, was the Germany of a hundred years ago. It 
adds, too, immeasurably to the laurels of the man 
who produced the present German Empire out of his 

53 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

own pocket, and stood as chief sponsor at its 
christening at Versailles in 1871. 

This Prussia that sent twenty thousand troops 
to aid Napoleon against Russia, and which during 
the retreat from Moscow went over bodily to the 
enemy ; this Prussia whose vacillating king simpered 
with delight at a kind word from Napoleon, and 
shivered with dismay at a harsh one ; this army with 
its officers as haughty as they were incapable, and 
its men only prevented from wholesale desertion by 
severe punishment, an army rotten at the core, with 
a coat of varnish over its worm-eaten fabric; this 
Prussia humiliated and disgraced after the battle 
of Jena, in 1806, in seven years' time came into its 
own again. Vom Stein, Scharnhorst, the son of a 
Hanoverian peasant, and Hardenberg put new life 
into the state. At Waterloo the pummelled squares 
of red-coats were relieved by these Prussians, and 
Blucher, or "Old Marschall Vor warts " as he was 
called, redeemed his countrymen's years of effem- 
inate lassitude and vacillation. 

" Such was Vor warts, such a fighter, 
Such a lunging, plunging smiter, 
Always stanch and always straight, 
Strong as death for love or hate, 
Always first in foulest weather, 
Neck or nothing, hell for leather, 
Through or over, sink or swim, 
Such was Vorwarts — here's to him!" 

Napoleon goes to Saint Helena and dies in 1821. 
What he did for Germany was to prove to her how 
impossible was a cluster of jealous, malicious pro- 

54 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 

vincial little state governments in the heart of 
Europe, protecting themselves from falling apart by 
the ancient legislative scaffolding of the Holy Roman 
Empire. He squeezed three hundred states into 
thirty-eight, and the very year of Waterloo, on April 
the ist, a German Napoleon was born who was to 
further squeeze these states into what is known to- 
day as the German Empire. 

The Congress of Vienna was a meeting of the 
European powers to redistribute the possessions, 
that Napoleon had scattered as bribes and rewards 
among his friends, relatives, and enemies, so far as 
possible, among their rightful owners. 

From the island of Elba, off the coast of Tuscany, 
Napoleon looked on while the allies quarrelled at 
this Congress of Vienna. Prussia claimed the right 
to annex Saxony; Russia demanded Poland, and 
against them were leagued England, Austria, and 
France, France represented by the Mephistophelian 
Talleyrand, who strove merely to stir the discord 
into another war. In the midst of their delibera- 
tions word came that the wolf was in the fold again. 
Napoleon was riding to Paris, through hysterical 
crowds of French men and women, eager for an- 
other throw against the world, if their Little 
Corporal were there to shake the dice for them. 
He had another throw and lost. The French 
Revolution in 1789, followed by the insurrection 
of all Europe against that strange gypsy child of 
the Revolution, Napoleon, from 1807-18 15, ended 
at last at Waterloo. This lover, who won whole 
nations as other men win a maid or two ; this ruler, 

55 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

who had popes for handmaidens and gave kingdoms 
as tips, who dictated to kings preferably from the 
palaces of their own capitals; this fortunate demon 
of a man, who had escaped even Mile. Montausier, 
was safely disposed of at Saint Helena, and the 
ordinary ways of mortals had their place in the 
world again. 

The Congress of Vienna reassembled, and the 
readjustment of the map of Europe began over 
again. Prussia is given back what had been taken 
away from her. A German confederation was 
formed in 1815 to resist encroachments, but with no 
definite political idea, and its diet, to which Prussia, 
Austria, and the other smaller states sent represen- 
tatives, became the laughing-stock of Europe. Jeal- 
ous bickerings and insistence upon silly formalities 
paralyzed legislation. Lawyers and others who 
presented their claims before this assembly from 
1806-1816 were paid in 1843! The liquidation of 
the debts of the Thirty Years' War was made after 
two hundred years, in 1850! The laws for the 
military forces were finally agreed upon in 1821, 
and put in force in 1840! 

There were three principal forms of government 
among these states: first, Absolutist, where the 
ruler and his officials governed without reference to 
the people, as in Prussia and Austria ; second, those 
who organized assemblies (Landstande), where no 
promises were made to the people, but where the 
nobles and notables were called together for consulta- 
tion; and third, a sort of constitutional monarchy 
with a written constitution and elected represen- 

56 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 

tatives, but with the ruler none the less supreme. 
One of the first rulers to grant such a constitution 
to his people was the Grand Duke who presided over 
the little court at Weimar. 

The mass of the people were wholly indifferent. 
The intellectuals were divided among themselves. 
The schools and universities after 1818 form asso- 
ciations and societies, the Burschenschaft, for ex- 
ample, and in a hazy professorial fashion talk and 
shout of freedom. They were of those passionate 
lovers of liberty, more intent on the dower than on 
the bride; willing to talk and sing and to tell the 
world of their own deserts, but with little iron in 
their blood. 

When a real man wants to be free he fights, he 
does not talk ; he takes what he wants and asks for 
it afterward; he spends himself first and affords it 
afterward. These dreamy gentlemen could never 
make the connection between their assertions and 
their actions. They were as inconsistent, as a man 
who sees nothing unreasonable in circulating ascetic 
opinions and a perambulator at the same time. 
They were dreary and technical advocates of 
liberty. 

At a great festival at the Wartburg, in 181 7, the 
students got out of hand, burned the works of those 
conservatives, Haller and Kotzebue, and the Code 
Napoleon. This youthful folly was purposely ex- 
aggerated throughout Germany, and was used by the 
party of autocracy to frighten the people, and also 
as a reason for passing even severer laws against the 
ebullitions of liberty. At a conference at Carlsbad 

57 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

in 1 819 the representatives of the states there as- 
sembled passed severe laws against the student so- 
cities, the press, the universities, and the liberal pro- 
fessors. 

From 18 1 5-1 830 the opinions of the more en- 
lightened changed. The fear of Napoleon was grad- 
ually forgotten, and the hatred of the absolutism of 
Prussia and Austria grew. 

In 1830 constitutions were demanded and were 
guardedly granted in Brunswick, Saxony, Hanover, 
and Hesse-Cassel. In 1832 things had gone so far 
that at a great student festival the black, red, and 
gold flag of the Burschenschaft was hoisted, toasts 
were drunk to the sovereignity of the people, to the 
United States of Germany, and to Europe Republi- 
can! This was followed by further prosecutions. 
Prussia condemned thirty-nine students to death, but 
confined them in a fortress. The prison-cell of the 
famous Fritz Reuter may be seen in Berlin to-day. 
In Hesse, the chief of the liberal party, Jordan, was 
condemned to six years in prison; in Bavaria a jour- 
nalist was imprisoned for four years, and other like 
punishments followed elsewhere. It was in 1837, 
when Queen Victoria came to the throne, that Han- 
over was cut off from the succession, as Hanover 
could not descend to a woman. The Duke of Cum- 
berland became the ruler of Hanover, and Eng- 
land ceased to hold any territory in Europe. 

From 1830-1847 there was comparative quiet in 
the political world. The rulers of the various states 
succeeded in keeping the liberal professorial rhetoric 
too damp to be valuable as an explosive. 

58 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 

Interwoven with this party in Germany, demand- 
ing for the people something more of representation 
in the government, was a movement for the binding 
together of the various states in a closer union. In 
1842 when the first stone was laid for the completion 
of the Cologne Cathedral, at a banquet of the Ger- 
man princes presided over by the King of Prussia, 
the King of Wurtemberg proposed a toast to " Our 
common country! " That toast probably marks the 
first tangible proof of the existence of any important 
feeling upon the subject of German unity. 

At a congress of Germanists at Frankfort, in 
1846, professors and students, jurists and histor- 
ians, talked and discussed the questions of a German 
parliament and of national unity more perhaps than 
matters of scholarship. 

In 1847 Professor Gervinus founded at Heidel- 
berg the Deutsche Zeitang, which was to be liberal, 
national, and for all Germany. 

I should be sorry to give the impression that I 
have not given proper value to the work of the Ger- 
man professor and student in bringing about a more 
liberal constitution for the states of Germany. Lie- 
big of Munich, Ranke of Berlin, Sybel of Bonn, 
Ewald of Gottingen, Mommsen in Berlin, Dollinger 
in Munich, and such men as Schiemann in Berlin to- 
day, were and are, not only scholars, but they have 
been and are political teachers; some of them vio- 
lently reactionary, if you please, but all of them stir- 
ring men to think. 

No such feeling existed then, or exists now, in 
Germany, as animated Oxford some fifty years ago 

59 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

when the greatest Sanscrit scholar then living was 
rejected by a vote of that body, one voter declaring : 
" I have always voted against damned intellect, and 
I trust I always may! " A state of mind that has 
not altogether disappeared in England even now. 
Indeed I am not sure, that the most notable feature 
of political life in England to-day, is not a grow- 
ing revolt against legislation by tired lawyers, and 
an increasing demand for common-sense governing 
again, even if the governing be done by those with 
small respect for " damned intellect/' 

The third French revolution of 1848 set fire 
to all this, not only in Germany but in Austria, 
Hungary, Roumania, and elsewhere. We must go 
rapidly through this period of seething and of po- 
litical teething. The parliament at Frankfort with 
nothing but moral authority discussed and de- 
claimed, and finally elected Archduke John of Aus- 
tria as " administrator " of the empire. There fol- 
lowed discussions as to whether Austria should even 
become a member of the new confederation. Two 
parties, the " Litttle Germanists " and the " Pan 
Germanists," those in favor of including, and those 
opposed to the inclusion of Austria, fought one an- 
other, with Prussia leading the one and Austria, 
with the prestige of having been head of the former 
Holy Roman Empire, the other. 

In 1849 Austria withdrew altogether and the 
King of Prussia was elected Emperor of Germany, 
but refused the honor on the ground that he could 
not accept the title from the people, but only from 
his equals. There followed riots and uprisings of 

60 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 

the people in Prussia, Saxony, Baden, and else- 
where throughout Germany. The Prussian guards 
were sent to Dresden to quell the rioting there and 
took the city after two days' fighting. The parlia- 
ment itself was dispersed and moved to Stuttgart, 
but there again they were dispersed, and the end 
was a flight of the liberals to Switzerland, France, 
and the United States. We in America profited by 
the coming of such valuable citizens as Carl Schurz 
and many others. There were driven from Ger- 
many, they and their descendants, many among our 
most valuable citizens. The descendant of one of 
the worthiest of them, Admiral Osterhaus, is one of 
the most respected officers in our navy, and will one 
day command it, and we could not be in safer hands. 
In 1849 ^e German Federal fleet was sold at auc- 
tion as useless ; Austria was again in the ascendant 
and German subjects in Schleswig were handed over 
to the Danes. 

In 1850 both the King of Prussia and the 
Emperor of Austria called congresses, but Prussia 
finally gave up hers, and the ancient confederation 
as of before 1848 met as a diet at Frankfort and 
from 1851-1858 Bismarck was the Prussian dele- 
gate and Austria presided over the deliberations. 

A factor that made for unity among the German 
states was the Zollverein. From 181 8-1853 under 
the leadership of Prussia the various states were 
persuaded to join in equalizing their tariffs. Be- 
tween 1834-5 Prussia, Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Sax- 
ony, Baden, Hesse-Nassau, Thuringia, and Frank- 
fort agreed upon a common standard for customs 

61 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

duties, and a few years later they were joined by 
Brunswick, Hanover, and the Mecklenburgs. Ger- 
man industry and commerce had their beginnings in 
these agreements. The hundreds of different cus- 
toms duties became so exasperating that even jealous 
little governments agreed to conform to simpler 
laws, and probably this commercial necessity did 
more to bring about the unity of Germany than 
the King, or politics, or the army. 

With the struggles of the various states to ob- 
tain constitutions we cannot deal, nor would it add 
to the understanding of the present political con- 
dition of the German Empire. 

Prussia, after riots in Berlin, after promises 
and delays from the vacillating King, who one day 
orders his own troops out of the capital and his 
brother, later William I, to England to appease the 
anger of the mob, and parades the streets with the 
colors of the citizens in revolt wrapped about him; 
and the next day, surly, obstinate, but ever orating, 
holds back from his pledges, finally accepts a con- 
stitution which is probably as little democratic as 
any in the world. 

Of the sixty-five million inhabitants of the Ger- 
man Empire, Prussia has over forty millions. The 
Landtag of Prussia is composed of two chambers, 
the first called the Herrenhaus, or House of Lords, 
and the second the Abgeordnetenhaus, or Chamber 
of Deputies. This upper house is made up of the 
princes of the royal family who are of age; the de- 
scendants of the formerly sovereign families of 
Hohenzollern-Hechingen and Hohenzollern-Sigmar- 

62 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 

ingen; chiefs of the princely houses recognized by 
the Congress of Vienna ; heads of the territorial 
nobility formed by the King; representatives of the. 
universities ; burgomasters of towns with more than 
fifty thousand inhabitants, and an unlimited num- 
ber of persons nominated by the King for life or for 
a limited period. This upper chamber is a mere 
drawing-room of the sovereign's courtiers, though 
there may be, and as a matter of fact there are at 
the present time, representatives even of labor in 
this chamber, but in a minority so complete that their 
actual influence upon legislation, except in a feeble 
advisory capacity, amounts to nothing. In this Her- 
renhaus, or upper chamber, of Prussia there are at 
this writing among the 327 members 3 bankers, 8 
representatives of the industrial and merchant class, 
and 1 mechanic; 12 in all, or not even four per 
cent., to represent the industrial, financial, com- 
mercial, and working classes. Even in the lower 
chamber, or Abgeordnetenhaus, there are only 10 
merchants, 19 manufacturers, 7 labor representa- 
tives, and 1 bank director, or 37 members who rep- 
resent the commercial, manufacturing, and indus- 
trial interests in a total membership of 443. 

In the other states of Germany much the same 
conditions exist. In Bavaria, in the upper house, 
or Kammer der Reichsrate, there is no representa- 
tive, and in the lower house of 163 members only 29 
representatives of the industrial world. 

In Saxony, the most socialistic state in Germany, 
the upper chamber with 49 members has 5 indus- 
trials; the lower chamber with 82 members has 40 

63 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

representatives of commercial, industrial, and fi- 
nancial affairs. 

In Wurtemberg, in the upper chamber with 51 
members there are 3 industrials; and in the second 
chamber with 63 members there are 17 industrials. 

In Baden, of the 37 members of the upper house 
there are 6 industrials; of the 73 members of the 
lower house there are 23 representatives of com- 
merce and industry. 

This condition of political inequality is the re- 
sult of the maintenance of the old political divisions, 
despite the fact that in the last thirty years the whole 
complexion of the country has changed radically, 
due to the rapid increase of the city populations rep- 
resenting the industrial and commercial progress 
of a nation that is now the rival of both the United 
States and Great Britain. In more than one in- 
stance a town with over 300,000 inhabitants will be 
represented in the legislature in the same propor- 
tion as a country population of 30,000. Stettin, for 
example, with a population of 245,000, which is a 
seventh of the total population of Pomerania, has 
only 6 of the 89 provincial representatives. Fur- 
ther, the three-class system of voting in Prussia and 
in the German cities, is a unique arrangement for 
giving men the suffrage without either power or 
privilege. According to this system every male in- 
habitant of Prussia aged twenty-five is entitled to 
vote in the election of members of the lower house. 
The voters, however, are divided into three classes. 
The division is made by taking the total amount 
of the state taxes paid in each electorial district and 

64 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 

dividing it into three equal amounts. The first third 
is paid by the highest tax-payers; the second third 
by the next highest tax-payers, and the last third by 
the rest. The first class consists of a comparatively 
few wealthy people ; it may even happen that a single 
individual pays a third of the taxes in a given dis- 
trict. These three classes then elect the members 
of an electoral college, who then elect the member 
of the house. In Prussia it may be said roughly that 
260,000 wealthy tax-payers elect one-third ; 870,000 
tax-payers elect one-third, and the other 6,500,000 
voters elect one-third of the members of the electoral 
college, with the consequence that the 6,500,000 are 
not represented at all in the lower house of Prussia. 
In order to make this three-class system of voting 
quite clear, let us take the case of a city where the 
same principle may be seen at work on a smaller 
scale. In 1910, in the city of Berlin, there were: 

931 voters of the first class paying 27,914,593 marks of the 

total tax. 
32,131 voters of the second class paying 27,908,776 marks of 

the total tax. 
357,345 voters of the third class paying 16,165,501 marks of 

the total tax. 

Roughly the voters in the first class each paid $7,- 
500; those in the second class $218; those in the 
third class $11. The 931 voters elected one-third, 
32,131 voters elected one-third, and 357,345 elected 
one-third of the town councillors. In this same year 
in Berlin there were : 

521 persons with incomes between $25,000 and $62,500. 
139 persons with incomes between $62,500 and $125,000. 

65 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

22 persons with incomes between $125,000 and $187,500. 

19 persons with incomes between $187,000 and $250,000. 

19 persons with incomes of $250,000 or more. Or 720 per- 
sons in Berlin in 1912 with incomes of over $25,000 a 
year, and they are practically the governors of the city. 

As a result of these divisions according to taxes 
paid, of the 144 town councillors elected, only 38 
were Social-Democrats, though Berlin is overwhelm- 
ingly Social-Democratic, and consequently the af- 
fairs of this city of more than 2,000,000 inhabitants 
are in the hands of 33,062 persons who elect two- 
thirds of the town councillors. 

In the city of Diisseldorf there were, excluding 
the suburbs, 62,443 voters at the election for town 
councillors in 19 10. The first class was composed 
of 797 voters paying from 1,940 to 264,252 marks 
of taxes; 6,645 voters paying from 222 to 1,939 
marks; and 55,001 voters paying 221 marks or less. 
These 7,442 voters of the first and second classes 
were in complete control of the city government by 
a clear majority of two-thirds. 

It is this three-class system of voting that makes 
Prussia, and the Prussian cities as well, impregnable 
against any assault from the democratically inclined. 
In addition to this system, the old electoral divisions 
of forty years ago remain unchanged, and conse- 
quently the agricultural east of Prussia, including 
east and west Prussia, Brandenburg, Pomerania, 
Posen, and Silesia, with their large landholders, re- 
turn more members to the Prussian lower house 
than the much greater population of western in- 
dustrial Prussia, which includes Sachsen, Hanover, 

66 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 

Westphalia, Schleswig-Holstein, Hohenzollern, Hes- 
sen-Nassau, and the Rhine. Further, the executive 
government of Prussia is conducted by a ministry of 
state, the members of which are appointed by the 
King, and hold office at his pleasure, without con- 
trol from the Landtag. 

How little the people succeeded in extorting from 
King Frederick William IV in the way of a con- 
stitution may be gathered from this glimpse of the 
present political conditions of Prussia. 

The local government of Prussia is practically as 
centralized in a few hands as the executive gov- 
ernment of the state itself. The largest areas are 
the provinces, whose chiefs or presidents also are 
appointed by the sovereign, and who represent the 
central government. There are twelve such prov- 
inces in Prussia, ranging in size from the Rhine- 
land and Brandenburg, with 7,120,519 and 4,093,- 
007 inhabitants respectively, to Schleswig-Holstein, 
with 1,619,673. 

Each province is divided into two or more gov- 
ernment districts, of which there are thirty-five in 
all. At the head of each of these districts is the 
district president, also appointed by the crown. 

In addition there is the Kreis, or Circle, of which 
there are some 490, with populations varying from 
20,000 to 801,000. These circles are, for all prac- 
tical purposes, governed by the Landrath, who is 
appointed for life by the crown, and who is so fully 
recognized as the agent of the central government 
and not as the servant of the locality in which he 
rules, that on one occasion several Landrathe were 

67 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

summarily dismissed for voting against the gov- 
ernment and in conformity to the wishes of the in- 
habitants of the circle in which they lived ! Though 
the Landrath is nominated by the circle assembly for 
appointment by the crown, he can be dismissed by 
his superiors of the central hierarchy. As his pro- 
motion, and his career in fact, is dependent upon 
these superiors, he naturally sides with the central 
government in all cases of dispute or friction. 

Further, and this is important, all officials in Ger- 
many are legally privileged persons. All disputes 
between individuals and public authorities in Ger- 
many are decided by tribunals quite distinct from 
the ordinary courts. These courts are specially con- 
stituted, and they aim at protecting the officials 
from any personal responsibility for acts done by 
them in their official capacity. 

In America, and I presume in Great Britain also, 
any disputes between public authorities and private 
individuals are settled in the ordinary courts of 
justice, under the rules of the ordinary law of the 
land. This super-common-law position of the Prus- 
sian official is a fatal incentive to the aggravating 
exaggeration of his importance, and to the indif- 
ference of his behavior to the private citizen. There 
may be officials who are uninfluenced by this shel- 
tered position, indeed I know personally many who 
are, but there is equally no doubt that many suc- 
cumb to arrogance and lethargy as a consequence. 

How thoroughly Prussia is covered by a net- 
work of officialdom, is further discovered when it 
is known, that the entire area of Prussia is some 

68 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 

twenty thousand square miles less than that of the 
State of California. The whole Prussian doctrine 
of local self-government, too, is entirely different 
from ours. Their idea is that self-government is the 
performance by locally elected bodies of the will of 
the state, not necessarily of the locality which elects 
them. Local authorities, whether elected or not, are 
supposed to be primarily the agents of the state, and 
only secondarily the agents of the particular lo- 
cality they serve. In Prussia, all provincial and 
circle assemblies and communal councils, may be dis- 
solved by royal decree, hence even these elected as- 
semblies may only serve their constituencies at the 
will and pleasure of the central authority. 

It would avail little to go into minute details in 
describing the government of Prussia; this slight 
sketch of the electoral system, and of the centrali- 
zation of the government, suffices to show two 
things that it is particularly my purpose to make 
clear. One is the preponderating influence of Prus- 
sia in the empire, due to the maintenance of power 
in a single person; and the other is to show how 
ridiculously futile it is to refer to Prussia as an ex- 
ample of the success of social legislation. The state 
ownership of railroads, old-age pensions, accident 
and sickness insurance, and the like are one thing in 
Prussia which is a close corporation, and quite an- 
other in any community or country under demo- 
cratic governmet. What takes place in Prussia 
would certainly not take place in America or in Eng- 
land. To draw inferences from a state governed 
as is Prussia, for application to such democratic 

69 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

communities as America or England, is as valuable 
as to argue from the habits of birds, that such and 
such a treatment would succeed with fish. 

It was with this autocratic Prussia at his back, 
that the greatest man Germany has produced, suc- 
ceeded in bringing about German unity and the 
foundation of the German Empire. As the repre- 
sentative of Prussia in the Diet, as her ambassador 
to Russia, and to France, he gained the insight into 
the European situation which led him to hold as his 
political creed, that only by blood and iron, and not 
by declamations and resolutions, could Germany be 
united. 

" During the time I was in office/' he writes, " I 
advised three wars, the Danish, the Bohemian, and 
the French; but every time I have first made clear 
to myself whether the war, if successful, would 
bring a prize of victory worth the sacrifices which 
every war requires, and which now are so much 
greater than in the last century. ... I have never 
looked at international quarrels which can only be 
settled by a national war from the point of view of 
the Gottingen student code ; . . . but I have always 
considered simply their reaction on the claim of the 
German people, in equality with the other great 
states and powers of Europe, to lead an autonomous 
political life, so far as is possible on the basis of 
our peculiar national capacity." In 1863 he writes 
to von der Goltz, then German ambassador in Paris : 
" The question is whether we are a great power or 
a state in the German federation, and whether we 
are conformably to the former quality to be gov- 

70 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 

erned by a monarch, or, as in the latter case would 
be at any rate admissible, by professors, district 
judges, and the gossips of the small towns. The 
pursuit of the phantom of popularity in Germany 
which we have been carrying on for the last forty 
years has cost us our position in Germany and in 
Europe; and we shall not win this back again by 
allowing ourselves to be carried away by the stream 
in the persuasion that we are directing its course, 
but only by standing firmly on our legs and being, 
first of all, a great power and a German federal state 
afterward" 

After Napoleon and the interminable elocution- 
ary squabbles of the German states, first, for con- 
stitutional rights, and, second, for some basis of 
unity among themselves, which were the two main 
streams of political activity, there were three main 
steps in the formation of the now existing empire : 
first, in 1866, the North German Confederation 
under the presidency of Prussia and excluding Aus- 
tria; second, the conclusion of treaties, 1 866-1 867, 
between the North German Confederation and the 
south German states; third, the formal union of the 
north and south German states as an empire in 1871. 

Although the Holy Roman Empire ceased to ex- 
ist legally in 1806, it is to be remembered that as a 
fiction weighing still upon the imagination of Ger- 
man politicians, it did not wholly disappear until the 
war between Prussia and Austria, for then Prussia 
fought not only Austria but Bavaria, Wiirtemberg, 
Saxony, Hanover, Nassau, Baden, and the two 
Hesse states, and at Sadowa in Bohemia the war 

71 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

was settled by the defeat of the Austrians before 
they could be joined by these allies, who were dis- 
posed of in detail. Frankfort was so harshly 
treated that the mayor hanged himself, and the 
Prussianizing of Hanover has never been entirely 
forgiven, and the claimants to the throne in exile 
are still the centre of a political party antagonistic 
to Prussia. The taking over of north Schleswig, 
of Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, and Nassau by Prussia 
after the Austrian war was according to the rough 
arbitrament of conquest. " Our right," replied Bis- 
marck to the just criticism of this spoliation, " is 
the right of the German nation to exist, to breathe, 
to be united; it is the right and the duty of Prussia 
to give the German nation the foundation necessary 
for its existence/ ' In taking Alsace-Lorraine from 
France, Bismarck insisted that this was a necessary 
barrier against France and that Germany's posses- 
sion of Metz and Strassburg were necessities of the 
situation also. 

The history of German unity is the biography of 
Bismarck. Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck was 
born in Schonhausen, in that Mark of Brandenburg 
which was the cradle of the Prussian monarchy, on 
the first of April,' 1815. His grandfather fought 
at Rossbach under the great Frederick. He was 
confirmed in Berlin in 183 1 by the famous pastor 
and theologian, Schleiermacher, and maintained all 
his life that without his belief in God he would have 
found no reason for his patriotism or for any seri- 
ous work in life. 

He matriculated as a student of law and science 

7^ 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 

at Gottingen in May, 1832, and later at Berlin in 
1834. He was a tall, large-limbed, blue-eyed young 
giant, the boldest rider, the best swordsman, and the 
heartiest drinker of his day. He is still looked upon 
in Germany as the typical hero of corps student 
life, and his pipe, or his Schlager, or his cap, or his 
Kneipe jacket is preserved as the relic of a saint. 
His was not the tepid virtue born of lack of vital- 
ity. One has but to remember Augustine and Ori- 
gen and Ignatius Loyola, to recall the fact that the 
preachers of salvation, the best of them, have gen- 
erally had themselves to tame before they mas- 
tered the world. 

This youth Bismarck must have had some vig- 
orous battles with Bismarck before he married Jo- 
hanna Friederika Charlotte Dorothea Eleanore von 
Puttkamer, July 28, 1847, much against the wishes 
of her parents, and settled down to his life-work. 
As was said of John Pym, " he thought it part of a 
man's religion to see that his country was well gov- 
erned," and his country became his passion. Like 
most men of intense feeling, he loved few people and 
loyally hated many. More men feared and envied 
him than liked him. His wife, his sister, his king, 
a student friend, Keyserling, and the American, 
Motley, shared with his country his affection. Ger- 
many might well take it to heart that it was Motley 
the American who was of all men dearest to her 
giant creator. The same type of American would 
serve her better to-day than any other, did she only 
know it! In 1849 he was elected to the Prussian 
Chamber. In 1852 a whiff of the old dare-devil got 

73 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

loose, and he fought a duel with Freiherr von 
Vincke. 

In 1852 he is sent on his first responsible mis- 
sion to Vienna, and found there the traditions of 
the Metternich diplomacy still ruling. What Na- 
poleon had said of Metternich he no doubt remem- 
bered : " II ment trop. II f aut mentir quelquef ois, 
mais mentir tout le temps c'est trop ! " for ha 
adopted quite the opposite policy in his own diplo- 
matic dealings. 

In 1855 he became a member of the upper house 
of Prussia, and in 1859 is sent as minister to St. 
Petersburg. In May, 1862, he is sent as minister 
to Paris, and learns to know, and not greatly to ad- 
mire, the third Napoleon and his court. 

On the 23d of September, 1862, he is appointed 
Staats-minister, and a week later thunders out his 
famous blood-and-iron speech. On October the 8th, 
1862, he is definitely named Minister President and 
Minister for Foreign Affairs. 

William I had succeeded his brother as king. He 
was a soldier and a believer in the army, and wished 
to spend more on it, and to lengthen the time of 
service with the colors to three years. The legis- 
lature opposed these measures. A minister was 
needed who could bully the legislature, and Bis- 
marck was chosen for the task. He spent the nec- 
essary money despite the legislative opposition, 
pleading that a legislature that refused to vote nec- 
essary supplies had ipso facto laid down its proper 
functions, and the king must take over the responsi- 
bilities of government that they declined to exercise. 

74 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 

The cavalry boots were beginning to trample their 
way to Paris, and to the crowning of an emperor. 

In February, 1864, Prussia and Austria together 
declare war upon Denmark over the Schleswig-Hol- 
stein succession. They agree to govern the spoils 
between them, but fall out over the question of their 
respective jurisdiction, and the Prussian army be- 
ing ready, and the Moltke plan of campaign worked 
out, war is declared, and in seven weeks the Treaty 
of Prague is signed, in 1866, by which Austria gives 
up all her rights in Schleswig-Holstein, and aban- 
dons her claim to take part in the reorganization of 
Germany. The North German Confederation is 
formed to include all lands north of the Main; 
Schleswig-Holstein, Hanover, the Hesse states, Nas- 
sau, and Frankfurt-am-Main become part of Prus- 
sia; and the south German states agree to remain 
neutral, but allies of Prussia in war. 

On the nth of March, 1867, a month after the 
formation of the Confederation of the North Ger- 
man States, Bismarck proclaims with pride in the 
new Reichstag : " Setzen wir Deutschland, so zu 
sagen, in den Sattel ! Reiten wird es schon kon- 
nen!" 

October 13th, 1868, Leopold von Sigmaringen, 
a German prince of the House of Hohenzollern, is 
named for the first time as a candidate for the Span- 
ish throne. Nobody in Germany, or anywhere else, 
was much more interested in this candidature, than 
we are now interested in the woman's suffrage or 
the prohibition candidate at home. But France had 
looked on with jealous eyes at the vigorous growth 

75 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

and martial successes of Prussia. It was thought 
well to attack her and humiliate her before she be- 
came stronger. All France was convinced, too, that 
the southern German states would revert to their old 
love in case of actual war, and side with the nephew 
of their former friend, the great Napoleon. The 
French ambassador is instructed to force the pace. 
Not only must the Prussian King disavow all in- 
tention to support the candidacy of the German 
prince, but he must be asked to humiliate himself 
by binding himself never in the future to push such 
claims. 

William I is at Ems, and Benedetti, the French 
ambassador, reluctantly presses the insulting de- 
mand of his country upon the royal gentleman as 
he is walking. The King declines to see Benedetti 
again, and telegraphs to Bismarck the gist of the 
interview. Lord Acton writes: "He [Bismarck] 
drew his long pencil and altered the text, showing 
only that Benedetti had presented an offensive de- 
mand, and that the King had refused to see him. 
That there might be no mistake he made this offi- 
cial by sending it to all the embassies and legations. 
Moltke exclaimed, ' You have converted surrender 
into defiance.' " The altered telegram was also sent 
to the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung and to 
officials. It is not perhaps generally known that 
General Lebrun went to Vienna in June, 1870, to 
discuss an alliance with Austria for an attack on 
the North German Confederation in the following 
spring. Bismarck knew this. This was on the 13th 
of July, 1870; on the 16th the order was given to 

7 6 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 

mobilize the army, on the 31st followed the procla- 
mation of the King to his people : " Zur Errettung 
des Vaterlandes." On August the 2d, King William 
took command of the German armies, and on Sep- 
tember 1st, Napoleon handed over his sword, and on 
January the 18th, 1871, King William of Prussia 
was proclaimed German Emperor in the Hall of the 
Mirrors in the palace at Versailles. 

" It sounds so lovely what our fathers did, 
And what we do is, as it was to them, 
Toilsome and incomplete." 

It is easy to forget in such a rapid survey of events 
that Bismarck could have had any serious opposi- 
tion to face as he trampled through those eight 
years, from 1862 to 1870, with a kingdom on his 
back. It is easy to forget that King William him- 
self wished to abdicate in those dark hours, when his 
people refused him their confidence, and called a 
halt upon his endeavors to strengthen the absolutely 
essential instrument for Prussia's development, the 
army; it is easy to forget that even the silent and 
seemingly imperturbable Moltke hesitated and wav- 
ered a little at the audacity of his comrade; it is 
easy to forget the conspiracy of opposition of the 
three women of the court, the Crown Princess, Frau 
von Blumenthal, and Frau von Gottberg, all of 
English birth, and all using needles against this man 
accustomed to the Schlager and the sword; it is 
easy to forget that even Queen Victoria's influence 
was used against him to prevent the reaping of the 
justifiable fruits of victory in 1871 ; it is easy to for- 

77 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

get what a bold throw it was to go to war with 
Austria, and to array Prussia against the very Ger- 
man states she must later bind to herself; it is easy 
to forget the dour patience of this irascible giant 
with the petulant and often petty legislature with 
which he had to deal. 

I cannot understand how any German can criti- 
cise Bismarck, but there are official prigs who do; 
little decorated bureaucrats who live their lives out 
poring over papers, with an eye out for a " von " 
before their bourgeois names, and as void of au- 
dacity as a sheep; men who creep up the stairway 
to promotion and recognition, clinging with cauti- 
ous grip to the banisters. One sees them, their coats 
covered with the ceramic insignia of their placid 
servitude, decorations tossed to them by the careless 
hand of a master who is satisfied if they but sign 
his decrees, with the i's properly dotted, and the t's 
unexceptionably crossed. They are the crumply 
officials who melted into defencelessness and moral 
decrepitude after Frederick the Great, and again at 
the glance of Napoleon, and who owe the little 
stiffness they have to the fact that Bismarck lived. 
It is one of the things a full-blooded man is least 
able to bear in Germany, to hear the querulous ques- 
tioning of the great deeds of this man, whose boot- 
legs were stiffer than the backbones of those who 
decry him. 

What a splendid fellow he was ! 

"Give me the spirit that, on this life's rough sea^ 
Loves to have his sails filled with a lusty wind, 
Even till his sail-yards tremble and his masts do crack, 

78 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 

And his rapt ship run on her side so low 
That she drinks water and her keel ploughs air. 
There is no danger to a man that knows 
What life and death is — there's not any law 
Exceeds his knowledge; neither is it lawful 
That he should stoop to any other law." 

He was no worshipper of that flimsy culture which 
is, and has been for a hundred years, an obsession of 
the German. He knew, none knew better indeed, 
that the choicest knowledge is only mitigated igno- 
rance. He surprised Disraeli with his mastery of 
English, and Napoleon with his fluency in French, 
both of which he had learned from his Huguenot 
professors. The popular man, the popular book, the 
popular music, picture, or play, were none of them a 
golden calf to him. He mastered what he needed 
for his work, and pretended to no enthusiasm for in- 
tellectualism as such. He knew that there is no real 
culture without character, and that the mere aptitude 
for knowing and doing without character is merely 
the simian cleverness that often dazzles but never 
does anything of importance. "Culture!" writes 
Henry Morley, " the aim of culture is to bring forth 
in their due season the fruits of the earth. ,, Any 
leaning, any accomplishments, that do not serve a 
man to bring forth the fruits of the earth in their 
due season are merely mental gimcracks, flimsy toys, 
to admire perhaps, to play with, and to be thrown 
aside as useless when duty makes its sovereign de- 
mands. 

Much as Germany has done for the development 
of the intellectual life of the world, she has suffered 
not a little from the superficial belief still widely 

79 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

held that instruction, that learning, are culture. 
Their Great Elector, their Frederick the Great, and 
their Bismarck, should have taught them the con- 
trary by now. 

The newly crowned German Emperor left Ver- 
sailles on March 7th for Berlin, and on March 21st 
the first Diet of the new empire was opened, and be- 
gan the task of adapting the constitution to the al- 
tered circumstances of the new empire. 

The German Empire now consists of four king- 
doms: Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Wurtemberg; 
of six grand duchies: Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, 
Saxe- Weimar, Oldenburg, Mecklenburg-Strelitz, 
and Mecklenburg-Schwerin ; of five duchies: Saxe- 
Meinigen, Saxe-Altenburg, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, 
Brunswick, and Anhalt; of seven principalities: 
Schwartzburg-Sondershausen, Schwartzburg-Rudol- 
stadt, Waldeck, Reuss (older line), Reuss (younger 
line), Lippe, and Schaumburg-Lippe ; of three free 
towns: Hamburg, Bremen, and Liibeck; and of 
one imperial province : Alsace Lorraine. 

The new empire is in a sense a continuation of 
the North German Confederation. There are 25 
states, the largest, Prussia, with a population of over 
40,000,000 ; the smallest, Schaumburg-Lippe, with a 
population of a little more than 46,000 and an area 
of 131 square miles. 

The central or federal authority controls the 
army, navy, foreign relations, railways, main roads, 
canals, post and telegraph, coinage, weights and 
measures, copyrights, patents, and legislation over 
nearly the whole field of civil and criminal law, regu- 

80 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 

lation of press and associations, imperial finance and 
customs tariffs, which are now the same throughout 
Germany. 

Bavaria still manages her own railways, and Sax- 
ony and Wurtemburg have certain privileges and ex- 
emptions. Administration is still almost entirely 
in the hands of the separate states. 

The law is imperial, but the judges are appointed 
by the states, and are under its authority. The su- 
preme court of appeal (Reichsgericht) sits at Leip- 
sic. 

The head of the executive government is the 
Emperor, no longer elective but hereditary, and 
attached to the office of the King of Prussia. Out- 
side of Prussia he has little power in civil matters 
and no veto on legislation. He is commander-in- 
chief of the army and of the navy; foreign affairs 
are in his hands, and in the federal council, or 
Bundesrath, he exercises a mighty influence due 
to Prussia's preponderating influence and voting 
power. There is no cabinet, just as there is no 
cabinet in Great Britain, that modern institution be- 
ing merely a legislative fiction down to this day. 
The chancellor of the empire, who is also prime* 
minister of Prussia, with several secretaries of state, 
is chief minister for all imperial affairs. The chan- 
cellor presides in the Bundesrath, and has the right 
to speak in the Reichstag, and frequently does speak 
there. Indeed, all his more important pronounce- 
ments are made there. The chancellor is respon- 
sible to the Emperor alone, by whom he is nomi- 
nated, and not to the representatives of the people. 

81 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

The federal council, or Bundesrath, or upper 
chamber of the empire, consists of delegates ap- 
pointed by and representing the rulers of the vari- 
ous states. There are 58 members. Prussia has 17, 
Bavaria 6, Saxony 4, Wiirtemberg 4, Baden 3, 
Hessen 3, Mecklenburg-Schwerin 2, Brunswick 2, 
and each of the other states 1. 

This body meets in Berlin, sits in secret, and the 
delegates have no discretion, but vote as directed by 
their state governments. Here it is that Prussia, 
and through Prussia the Emperor, dominates. This 
Bundesrath is the most powerful upper chamber in 
the world. With respect to all laws concerning the 
army and navy, and taxation for imperial purposes^ 
the vote of Prussia shall decide disputes, if such vote 
be cast in favor of maintaining existing arrange- 
ments. In other words, Prussia is armed in the 
Bundesrath with a conservative veto ! In declaring 
war and making treaties, the consent of the Bundes- 
rath is required. The following articles also give the 
Bundesrath a very complete control of the Reihstag. 
Article 7 reads : " The Bundesrath shall take ac- 
tion upon (1) the measures to be proposed to the 
Reichstag and the resolutions passed by the same; 
;(2) the general administrative provisions and ar- 
rangements necessary for the execution of the im- 
perial laws, so far as no other provision is made by 
law; (3) the defects which may be discovered in 
the execution of the imperial laws or of the pro- 
visions and arrangements heretofore mentioned/ 9 

The Reichstag, or lower house, is elected by uni- 
versal suffrage in electoral districts which were 

82 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 

originally equal, but as we have noted are far from 
equal now. This house has three hundred and 
ninety-seven members, of whom two hundred and 
thirty-five are from Prussia. It sits for five years, 
but may be dissolved by the Bundesrath with the 
consent of the Emperor. All members of the 
Bundesrath, as well as the chancellor, may speak in 
the Reichstag. Nor the chancellor, nor any other 
executive officer, is responsible to the Reichstag, 
nor can be removed by its vote, and the ministers 
of the Emperor are seldom or never chosen from 
this body. This Reichstag is really only nominally 
a portion of the governing body. It has the right 
to refuse to pass a bill presented by the government, 
but if it does so it may be summarily dismissed, as 
has happened several times, and another election 
usually provides a more amenable body. 

Of the various political parties in the Reichstag 
we have written elsewhere. It is, perhaps, fair to 
say that such powerful parties as the Socialists and 
the Centrum must be reckoned with by the chancel- 
lor. He cannot actually trample upon them, nor can 
he disregard wholly their wishes in framing and in 
carrying through legislation. It would be going 
much too far in characterizing the weakness of the 
Reichstag to leave that impression upon the reader. 
None the less it remains true that it is the executive 
who rules and has the whip-hand, and who in a 
grave crisis can override the representatives of the 
people assembled in the Reichstag, and on more 
than one occasion this has been done. 

It seems highly unnecessary to announce after 

83 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

this description of the imperial constitution that 
there is no such thing in Germany as democratic 
or representative government. But this fact cannot 
be proclaimed too often since in other countries it 
is continually assumed that this is the case. All 
sorts of deductions are made, all sorts of illustrations 
used, all sorts of legislative and social lessons taught 
from the example of Germany, without the smallest 
knowledge apparently on the part of those who 
make them, that Germany to-day is no more dem- 
ocratic than was Turkey twenty years ago. 

What can be done and what is done in Germany 
has no possible bearing upon what can be done in 
America or in England. All analogies are false, all 
illustrations futile, all examples valueless, for the 
one reason that the empire of Germany is governed 
by one man, who declaims his independence of the 
people and admits his responsibility to God alone. 
This may be either a good or a bad thing. Certainly 
in many matters of economical and comfortable 
government for the people — witness more partic- 
ularly the development and wise control of their 
municipalities — they are a century ahead of us, but 
this is not the question under discussion. The point 
is, that a compact nation under strict centralized 
control, served by a trained horde of officials with 
no wish for a change, and backed by a standing 
army of over seven hundred thousand men, who 
are not only a defence against the foreigner, but a 
powerful police against internal revolution, cannot 
serve as a model in either its successes or failures 
for a democratic country like ours. Where in Ger- 

8 4 



FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 

many legislative schemes succeed easily when this 
huge bureaucratic machine is behind them, they 
would fail ignominiously in a country lacking this 
machinery, and lacking these pitiably tame people ac- 
customed to submission. 

In France, for example, that thrifty and indi- 
vidualistic folk made a complete failure of the at- 
tempt to foist contributory old-age pensions upon 
them, and I doubt whether such sumptuary leg- 
islation can succeed with us. That, however, is 
neither here nor there. The gist of the matter is, 
that because such things succeed in Germany, gives 
not the slightest reason for supposing that they will 
succeed with us. If this outline of their history and 
this sketch of their government have done nothing 
else, it must have made this clear. It may also help 
to show how vapid is the talk about what the Ger- 
man people will or will not do ; whether they will or 
will not have war, for example. We shall have war 
when the German Kaiser touches a button and gives 
an order, and the German people will have no more 
to say in the matter than you and I. 



85 



Ill 

THE INDISCREET 

THE casual observer of life in England would 
find himself forced to write of sport, even 
as in India he would write of caste, as in 
America he would note the undue emphasis laid 
upon politics. In Germany, wherever he turns, 
whether it be to look at the army, to inquire about 
the navy, to study the constitution, or to disentangle 
the web of present-day political strife; to read the 
figures of commercial and industrial progress, or 
the results of social legislation; to look on at the 
Germans at play during their yachting week at Kiel, 
or their rowing contests at Frankfort, he finds him- 
self face to face with the Emperor. 

The student visits Berlin, or Potsdam, or Wil- 
helmshohe; or with a long stride finds himself on 
the docks at Hamburg or Bremen, or beside the 
Kiel Canal, or in Kiel harbor facing a fleet of war- 
ships; or he lifts his eyes into the air to see a 
dirigible balloon returning from a voyage of two 
hundred and fifty miles toward London over the 
North Sea, and the Emperor is there. Is it the 
palace hidden in its shrubbery in the country; is it 
the clean, broad streets and decorations of the 
capital; is it a discussion of domestic politics, or a 

86 



THE INDISCREET 

question of foreign politics, the Emperor's hand is 
there. His opinion, his influence, what he has said 
or has not said, are inextricably interwoven with 
the woof and web of German life. 

We may like him or dislike him, approve or dis- 
approve, rejoice in autocracy or abominate it, admire 
the far-reaching discipline, or regret the iron mould 
in which much of German life is encased, but for 
the moment all this is beside the mark. Here is a 
man who in a quarter of a century has so grown 
into the life of a nation, the most powerful on the 
continent, and one of the three most powerful in 
the world, that when you touch it anywhere you 
touch him, and when you think of it from any angle 
of thought, or describe it from any point of view, 
you find yourself including him. 

Personally, I should have been glad to leave this 
chapter unwritten. I have no taste for the discus- 
sion and analysis of living persons, even when they 
are of such historic and social importance, and of 
such magnitude, that I am thus given the proverbial 
license of the cat. But to write about Germany 
without writing about the Emperor is as impossible 
as to jump away from one's own shadow. When 
the sun is behind any phase or department of Ger- 
man life, the shadow cast is that of Germany's 
Emperor. 

This is not said because it is pleasing to whom- 
soever it may be, for in Germany, and in much 
of the world outside Germany, this situation is 
looked upon as unfavorable, and even deplorable; 
and certainly no American can look upon it with 

87 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

equanimity, for it is of the essence of his Ameri- 
canism to distrust it. It is, however, so much a fact 
that to neglect a discussion of this personality would 
be to leave even so slight a sketch of Germany as 
this, hopelessly lop-sided. He so pervades German 
life that to write of the Germany of the last twenty- 
five years without attempting to describe William 
the Second, German Emperor, would be to leave 
every question, institution, and problem of the coun- 
try without its master-key. 

In other chapters dealing more particularly with 
the political development of Germany, and with the 
salient characteristics, mental and moral, of the 
people, we shall see how it has come about, that one 
man can thus impregnate a whole nation of sixty- 
five millions with his own aims and ambitions, to 
such an extent, that they may be said, so to speak, 
to live their political, social, martial, religious, and 
even their industrial, life in him. It is a phenom- 
enon of personality that exists nowhere else in the 
world to-day, and on so large a scale and among so 
enlightened a people, perhaps never before in his- 
tory. 

Nothing has made scientific accuracy in dealing 
with the most interesting and most important factors 
in the world, so utterly inaccurate and misleading, 
as those infallibly accurate and impersonal agents, 
electricity and the sun. If one were to judge a man 
by his photographs, and the gossip of the press, one 
would be sure to know nothing more valuable about 
him than that his mustache is brushed up, and that 
his brows are permanently lowering. Personality is 

88 



THE INDISCREET 

so evasive that one may count upon it that when a 
machine says " There it is ! " then there it is not ! 
You will have everything that is patent and nothing 
that is pertinent. 

We are forever talking and writing about the 
smallness of the world, of how much better we 
know one another, and of how much more we 
should love one another, now that we flash photo- 
graphs and messages to and fro, at a speed of 
leagues a second. Nothing could be more futile 
and foolish. These things have emphasized our dif- 
ferences, they have done nothing to realize our like- 
ness to one another. We are as far from one an- 
other as in the days, late in the tenth century, when 
they complained in England that men learned fierce- 
ness from the Saxon of Germany, effeminacy from 
the Fleming, and drunkenness from the Dane. 

As probably the outstanding figure and best- 
known, superficially known, man in the world, the 
German Emperor has escaped the notice of very 
few people who notice anything. His likeness is 
everywhere, and gossip about him is on every 
tongue. He is as familiar to the American as 
Roosevelt, to the Englishman as Lloyd-George, to 
the Frenchman as Dreyfus, to the Russian as his 
Czar, and to the Chinese and Japanese as their most 
prominent political figure. And yet I should say 
that he is comparatively little known, either ex- 
ternally or internally, as he is. 

It is perhaps the fate of those of most influence 
to be misunderstood. Of this, I fancy, the Emperor 
does not complain. Indeed, those feeble folk who 

8 9 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

complain of being misunderstood, ought to console 
themselves with the thought that practically all our 
imperishable monuments, are erected to the glory of 
those whom we condemned and criticised; starved 
and stoned; burned and crucified, when we had them 
with us. 

William II, German Emperor and King of 
Prussia, was born January 27, 1859, and became 
German Emperor June 15, 1888. He is, therefore, 
in the prime of life, and looks it. His complexion 
and eyes are as clear as those of an athlete, and his 
eyes, and his movements, and his talk are vibrating 
with energy. He stands, I should guess, about five 
feet eight or nine, has the figure and activity of an 
athletic youth of thirty, and in his hours of friend- 
liness is as careless in speech, as unaffected in man- 
ner, as lacking in any suspicion of self -consciousness, 
or of any desire to impress you with his importance, 
as the simplest gentleman in the land. 

Alas, how often this courageous and gentlemanly 
attitude has been taken advantage of! I have 
headed this chapter The Indiscreet, and I propose 
to examine these so-called indiscretions in some de- 
tail, but for the moment I must ask : Is there any 
excuse for, or any social punishment too severe for, 
the man who, introduced into a gentleman's house 
in the guise of a gentleman, often by his own am- 
bassador, leaves it, to blab every detail of the con- 
versation of his host, with the gesticulations and ex- 
clamation points added by himself? To add a little 
to his own importance, he will steal out with the 
conversational forks and spoons in his pockets, and 

90 



THE INDISCREET 

rush to a newspaper office to tell the world that he 
has kept his soiled napkin as a souvenir. The only 
indiscretion in such a case is when the host, or his 
advisers, or gentlemen anywhere, heed the lunatic 
laughter of such a social jackal. 

To count one's words, to tie up one's phrases 
in caution, to dip each sentence in a diplomatic 
antiseptic, in the company of those to whom one has 
conceded hospitality, what a feeble policy! Better 
be brayed to the world every day as indiscreet than 
that! 

It is a fine quality in a man to be in love with 
his job. Even though you have little sympathy with 
Savonarola's fierceness or Wesley's hardness, they 
were burning up all the time with their allegiance 
to their ideals of salvation. They served their Lord 
as lovers. Many men, even kings and princes and 
other potentates, give the impression that they would 
enjoy a holiday from their task. They seem to be 
harnessed to their duties rather than possessed by 
them ; they appear like disillusioned husbands rather 
than as radiant lovers. 

The German Emperor is not of that class. He 
loves his job. In his first proclamation to his people 
he declared that he had taken over the government 
" in the presence of the King of kings, promising 
God to be a just and merciful prince, cultivating 
piety and the fear of God." He has proclaimed 
himself to be, as did Frederick the Great and his 
grandfather before him, the servant of his people. 
Certainly no one in the German Empire works 
harder, and what is far more difficult and far more 

9i 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

self-denying, no one keeps himself fitter for his 
duties than he. He eats no red meat, drinks almost 
no alcohol, smokes very little, takes a very light meal 
at night, goes to bed early and gets up early. He 
rides, walks, shoots, plays tennis, and is as much 
in the open air as his duties permit. 

It is not easy for the American to put side by 
side the attitudes of a man, who is the autocratic 
master and at the same time declares himself to be 
the first servant of his people. Perhaps if it is 
phrased differently it will not seem so contradictory. 
What this Emperor means, and what all princes who 
have believed in their right to rule meant, was not 
that they were the servants of their people, but the 
servants of their own obligations to their people, 
and of the duties that followed therefrom. If in 
addition to this the claim is made by the sovereign, 
that his right to rule is of divine origin, then his 
service to his obligations becomes of the highest and 
most sacred importance. 

We should not allow our democratic prejudices 
to stifle our understanding in such matters. We 
are trying to get clearly in perspective a ruler, who 
claims to rule in obedience to no mandates from the 
people, but in obedience, to God. We could not be 
ruled by such a one in America; and in England 
such a ruler would be deemed unconstitutional. It 
is elementary, but necessary to repeat, that we are 
writing of Germany and the Germans, and of their 
history, traditions, and political methods. We are 
making no defence of either the German Emperor 
or the German people ; neither are we occupying an 

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THE INDISCREET 

American pulpit to preach to them the superiority 
of other methods than their own. My sole task is 
to make clear the German situation, and not by any 
means to set up my own or my countrymen's 
standards for their adoption. I am not searching for 
that paltry and ephemeral profit that comes from 
finding opportunities to laugh or to sneer. I am 
seeking for the German successes, and they are 
many, and for the reasons for them, and for the 
lessons that we may learn from them. Any other 
aim in writing of another people is ignoble. 

This attitude of the ruler will be as incompre- 
hensible to the democratic citizen as alchemy, but, 
in order to draw anything like true inferences or 
useful deductions, in order to understand the sit- 
uation and to get a true likeness of the ruler, one 
must take this utterly unfamiliar and to us incom- 
prehensible claim into consideration, and acknowl- 
edge its existence whether we admit the claim as 
justifiable or not. The relation of such a ruler to 
his people is like that of a Catholic bishop to his 
flock. The contract is not one made with hands, 
but is an inalienable right on the one hand, and an 
undisseverable tie upon the other. Bismarck wrote 
on this subject : " Fur mich sind die Worte, ' von 
Gottes Gnaden/ welche christliche Herrscher ihrem 
Namen beifiigen, kein leerer Schall, sondern ich 
sehe darin das Bekenntniss, dass die Fiirsten das 
Scepter was ihnen Gott verliehen hat, nur nach 
Gottes Willen auf Erden fiihren wollen. ,, 

On several occasions the German Emperor has 
made it unmistakably clear that this is his view of 

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GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

the origin and sanctity of his responsibilities. " If 
we have been able to accomplish what has been ac- 
complished, it is due above all things to the fact 
that our house possesses a tradition by virtue of 
which we consider that we have been appointed 
by God to preserve and direct, for their own wel- 
fare, the people over whom he has given us power." 
These words are from a speech made in 1897 at 
Bremen. In 1910, at Konigsberg, he declares: " It 
was in this spot that my grandfather in his own 
right placed the royal crown of Prussia upon his 
head, insisting once again that it was bestowed upon 
him by the grace of God alone, and not by par- 
liaments and meetings and decisions of the people. 
He thus regarded himself as the chosen instrument 
of heaven, and as such carried out his duties as a 
ruler and lord. I consider myself such an instru- 
ment of heaven, and shall go my way without re- 
gard to the views and opinions of the day." 

Prince Henry of Prussia, the popular, deservedly 
popular, sailor brother of the Emperor, has signi- 
fied his entire allegiance to this doctrine by saying 
that he was actuated by one single motive : " a 
desire to proclaim to the nations the gospel of 
your Majesty's sacred person, and to preach that 
gospel alike to those who will listen and to those 
who will not." 

This language has a strange and far-away sound 
to us. It is as though one should come into the 
market-place with the bannered pomp of Milton's 
prose upon his lips. The vicious would think it a 
trick, the idle would look upon it as a heavy form of 

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THE INDISCREET 

joking, the intelligent would see in it a superstition, 
or a dream of knighthood that has faded into un- 
recognizable dimness. Some men, on the other 
hand, might wish that all rulers and governors 
whatsoever were equally touched with the sanctity 
of their obligations. 

It is somewhat strange in this connection to re- 
member, that we all wish to have our wives and 
daughters believers; that we all wish to bind to us 
those whom we love with more sacred bonds 
than those which we ourselves can supply. We are 
none of us loath to have those who keep our trea- 
sures, believe in some code higher than that of 
" honesty is the best policy." As Archbishop 
Whately said : " Honesty is the best policy, but he 
who is honest for that reason is not an honest man.'' 

Far be it from me to appear as an advocate of 
the divine right of kings ; but I am no fit person for 
this particular task if I have only a sniff, or a 
guffaw, as an explanation of another's beliefs. 
History sparkles with the lives of men and women, 
who proclaimed themselves messengers and servants 
of God, obedient to him first, and utterly and cou- 
rageously negligent of that feline commodity, public 
opinion. Every man, even to-day', 

" Who each for the joy of the working, and each in his sep- 
arate star, 
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as 
They Are," 

has a grain of this salt of divine independence in 
him. To-day, even as in the days of Pericles : " It 

95 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

is ever from the greatest hazards that the greatest 
honors are gained," and the greatest hazard of all is 
to shut your visor and couch your lance and have at 
your task with a whispered: God and my Right! 
It is well to remember that under no government, 
whether democratic or aristocratic, has the individ- 
ual ever been given any rights. He has always 
everywhere been pointed to his duties; his rights 
he must conquer for himself. 

The liberal in theology, as the liberal in politics, 
has perhaps leaned too far toward softness. The 
democratization of religion has gone on with the 
rest, and in our rebound from Calvin, and John 
Knox, and Jonathan Edwards, we have left all 
discipline and authority out of account. We have 
preached so persistently of the fatherhood of God, 
of his nearness to us, of his profound pity for us, 
that we have lost sight of his justice and his power. 
This nearness has become a sort of innocuous neigh- 
borliness, and God is looked upon not as a ruler, 
but as a vaporish good fellow whose chief business 
it is to forgive. We have substituted a feverish- 
handed charity for a sinewy faith, and are excus- 
ing our divorce from divinely imposed duties, by 
a cheerful but illicit intercourse with chance ac- 
quaintances, all of whom are dubbed social service. 

This Cashmere-shawl theology is as idle an inter- 
pretation of man's relation to the universe, and 
far more debilitating, than any that has gone be- 
fore. When we come to measure rulers who make 
divine claims for their duties, from any such coign 
of flabbiness as this, no wonder we stand dumb. I 

9 6 



THE INDISCREET 

am willing to concede that perhaps even an emperor 
has been baptized with the blood of the martyrs, 
and feels himself to be in all sincerity the instrument 
of God; if we are to understand this one, we must 
admit so much. 

In certain departments of life, we not only grant, 
but we demand, that our wives and mothers should 
look upon their special duties and peculiar functions 
as divinely imparted, and as beyond argument, and 
as above coercion. This assumption, therefore, of 
inalienable rights is not so strange to us ; on the con- 
trary, it is an every-day affair in most of our lives. 
This particular manifestation of it is all that is new 
or surprising. We Americans and English look 
upon it as dangerous, but the Germans, more 
mystical and far more lethargic about liberty than 
are we, are not greatly disturbed by it. The secular 
press, largely in Jewish hands, and the new socialist 
members of the Reichstag, jealous of their preroga- 
tives but unable to assert them, criticise and even 
scream their abhorrence and unbelief; but I am 
much mistaken, if the mass of the Germans are at 
heart much disturbed by their Emperor's assertions 
of his divine right to rule. A conservative member 
of the Reichstag speaks of, "a parliament which 
will maintain the monarch in his strong position as 
the wearer of the German imperial crown, not the 
semblance of a monarch but one that is dependent 
upon something higher than party and parliament 
— one dependent upon the King of all kings." 

To a thoroughbred American, with two and more 
centuries of the traditions of independence behind 

97 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

him, this question of the divine right of kings is a 
commonplace. He is a king himself, he holds his 
own rights to be divine, and his influence and his 
power to be limited only by his character and his 
abilities, like that of any other sovereign. He may 
rule over few or many, he may control the destiny 
of only one or of many subjects, he may be well 
known or little known, but that he is a sovereign 
individual by the grace of God, it never occurs to 
him to doubt. It is perhaps for this reason that the 
real American is placid and unself -conscious before 
this claim. It is those who admit and suffer from 
the exactions and tyrannies of such a claim that he 
pities, not the man who makes it, whom he distrusts. 
I carry my sovereignty under my hat, says the 
American; if any man or men can knock off the 
hat and take away the sovereignty, there is a fair 
field and no favor ; for those who whimper and com- 
plain of tyranny he has long since ceased to have 
a high regard. 

That William the Second is the chief figure of 
interest in the world to-day is due, not alone to this 
assumption of a divine relation to the state, or to 
his own vigorous and electric personality, but to the 
freedom to develop and to express that personality. 
Men in politics have dwindled in importance and in 
power, as the voters have increased in numbers and 
in influence. Genius must be true to itself to bloom 
luxuriantly. It is impossible to be seeking the suf- 
frage of a constituency and at the same time to be 
wholly one's self. The German Emperor is un- 
hampered, as is no other ruler, by considerations 

98 



THE INDISCREET 

of popular favor; and at the same time he directs 
and influences not Russian peasants, nor Turkish 
slaves, but an instructed, enlightened, and ambitious 
people. This environment is unique in the world 
to-day, and the Germans as a whole seem to con- 
sider their ruler a valuable asset, despite occasional 
vagaries that bring down their own and foreign 
criticism upon him. 

Here we have a versatile and vigorous personality 
with no shadow of a stain upon his character, and 
with no question upon the part of his bitterest enemy 
of the honesty of his intentions, or of his devotion 
to his country's interests. So far as he has been 
assailed abroad, it is on the score that he has made 
his country so powerful in the last twenty-five years 
that Germany is a menace to other powers; so far 
as he has been criticised at home it is on the score 
of his indiscretions. 

It is of prime importance, therefore, both to 
glance at the progress of Germany and to exam- 
ine these so-called indiscretions. Throughout these 
chapters will be found facts and figures dealing with 
the fairy-like change which has taken place in Ger- 
many since my own student days. I can remember 
when a chimney was a rare sight. Now there are 
almost as many manufacturing towns as then there 
were chimneys. Leipzig was a big country town, 
Pforzheim, Chemnitz, Oschatz, Elberfeld, Riesa, 
Kiel, Essen, Rheinhausen, and their armies of 
laborers, and their millions of output, were mere 
shadows of what they are now. 

In 1873, when Bismarck began his attempts at 

99 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

railway legislation, Germany was divided into sixty- 
three " railway provinces/' and there were fifteen 
hundred different tariffs, and it is to be remembered 
that it was only as late as 1882 that the state system 
of railways at last triumphed in Prussia. In only 
ten years the railway trackage has increased from 
49,041 to 52,216 miles; the number of locomotives 
from 18,291 to 26,612; freight-cars from 398,000 
to 558,000; the passengers carried from 804,000,000 
to 1,457,000,000; and the tons of freight carried 
from 341,000,000 tons to 519,000,000 tons. In 
Prussia alone there are 1,000,000 more horses, 
1,000,000 more beef cattle, and 10,000,000 more 
pigs. The total production of beet sugar in the 
world approximates 7,000,000 tons; of this amount 
Germany produces 2,500,000 tons. Great Britain 
consumes more sugar per head of the population 
than any other country, and of her consumption of 
1,460,000 tons of beet sugar all of it is produced 
from beets grown on the continent. Between 1885 
and 19 1 2 the population increased from 46,000,000 
to 66,000,000. The expenditure on the navy has 
increased in the last ten years from $47,500,000 to 
$110,000,000, and the number of men from 31,157 
to 60,805, with another increase in both money and 
men, voted at the moment of this writing in the sum- 
mer of 1912. 

The debt of Germany, exclusive of paper money, 
in 1887 was 486,201,000 marks; in 1903 it stood 
at 2,733,500,000. In 191 1 the funded debt of the 
empire was 4,524,000,000 marks, and the funded 
debt of the states 14,880,000,000; and the floating 

100 



THE INDISCREET 

debt amounts to 991,000,000, of which Prussia alone 
bears 610,000,000 and the empire 300,000,000. Be- 
tween the years 1871 and 1897 a debt of $500,000,- 
000 was incurred, bearing an average interest 
charge of sH P er cent - ^ n the year 1908 the com- 
bined expenditures of the states and of the empire 
reached the enormous total of $1,775,000,000. The 
debt of the city of Berlin alone in 19 10 had reached 
$1 10,750,000 and has increased in the last two years. 

For purposes of comparison one may note that 
our own later national budgets run roughly to 
$1,000,000,000. The British budget for 191 1 was 
$906,420,000. After the French war, speculation 
on a large scale ensued. The payment of the $1,000,- 
000,000 indemnity had a bad effect. As has often 
happened in America, money, or the mere means of 
exchange, was taken for wealth. The earth will be 
as cold as the moon before men learn that the only 
real wealth is health. Many schemes and companies 
were floated and after 1873 there was a prolonged 
financial crisis in Germany, It is said that bank- 
ruptcy and the liquidation of bubble companies en- 
tailed a loss of a round $90,000,000. It was in 
1876-77, when Germany was thus suffering, that 
the policy of protection was mooted and finally put 
into operation by Bismarck in 1879. Ten years 
later the laws for accident, old age, and sickness 
insurance were passed, at the instigation and under 
the direct influence of the present Emperor. 

The tonnage of steam vessels under 4,000 tons 
in Great Britain (net tons) was, some five years ago, 
8,165,527; in Germany (gross tons), 977,410; but 

101 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

the tonnage of steam vessels of 4,000 tons and over 
was in Great Britain 1,446,486, in Germany 1,119,- 
537 ! It should be added that no small part of Great 
Britain's big ships belong to the American Shipping 
Trust, sailing under the British flag. Albert Ballin 
became a director of the Hamburg- American line 
in 1886, and was made general director in 1900. 
During his directorship the capital of the line has 
been increased from 15,000,000 to 125,000,000 
of marks, and the number of steamers from 26 
to 170. 

Germany's combined export and import trade in 
1880 was $1,429,025,000; in 1890, $1,875,050,000; 
and in 1905 it was $3,324,018,000; in 1910, $4,019,- 
072,250. The German production of coal and coal 
products in 19 10 was the highest in its history, 
amounting to 265,148,232 metric tons. It would 
be easy enough to chronicle the commercial and in- 
dustrial strides of Germany during the last quarter 
of a century by the compilation of a catalogue of 
figures. It is not my intention to persuade the reader 
to believe in any such fantastic theory as that the 
present Kaiser is entirely responsible for this prog- 
ress. I am no Pygmalion that I can make an Em- 
peror by breathing prayers before pages of statistics. 

It is only fair, however, in any sketch of the 
Emperor to give this skeleton outline of what has 
taken place in the empire over which he rules, and 
which in certain quarters, it is said, he menaces by 
his predilection for war. These few figures spell 
peace, they do not spell war, and the ruler who has 
some 700,000 armed men at his back, and a navy 

102 



THE INDISCREET 

the second in strength in the world guarding his 
shores, and a mercantile marine carrying his trade 
which is hard on the heels of Great Britain as a 
rival, but who has none the less kept his country at 
peace with the world for twenty-five years, may be 
credited at least with good intentions. 

It may be said in answer to this same argument 
that this building and training and enriching of a 
nation are a threat in themselves. True, a strong 
man is more dangerous than a weak one ; but it is 
equally true that a strong man is a greater safe- 
guard than a weak one where the question of peace 
is at stake. It is also true that a rich and powerful 
man must needs take more precautions against at- 
tack and robbery than a tramp. A tramp seldom 
carries even a bunch of keys, and pays no premium 
on fire, accident, or burglary insurance. 

William the Second knows his history as well as 
any of his people, and incomparably better than 
his English, French, or American critics. He knows 
that only twenty years after the death of Frederick 
the Great, the Prussian power went down before 
Napoleon like a house of cards, and that the coun- 
try's humiliation was stamped in bold outlines when 
Napoleon was received in Berlin with the ringing 
of bells, the firing of cannons, and he himself 
greeted as a savior and a benefactor. That was 
only a hundred years ago. Is it an indiscretion, 
then, when the present ruler, speaking at Branden- 
burg the 5th of March, 1890, says: " I look upon 
the people and nation handed on to me as a re- 
sponsibility conferred upon me by God, and that it 

103 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

is, as is written in the Bible, my duty to increase 
this heritage, for which one day I shall be called 
upon to give an account ; those who try to interfere 
with my task, I shall crush"? 

On his accession to the throne his first two proc- 
lamations were to the army and the navy, his third 
to the people. On the 14th of July, 1888, he re- 
viewed the fleet at Kiel, and for the first time an 
Emperor of Germany and King of Prussia appeared 
there in the uniform of an admiral. In April, 1897, 
Queen Victoria celebrated the sixtieth year of her 
reign, and Prince Henry represented Germany, ap- 
pearing as admiral of the fleet in an old battle- 
ship, the King William. On the 24th of April the 
Emperor telegraphed to his brother : " I regret ex- 
ceedingly that I cannot put at your disposition for 
this celebration a better ship, especially when all 
other countries are appearing with their finest ships 
of war. It is a sad consequence of the manoeuvring 
of those unpatriotic persons who have obstructed 
the construction of even the most necessary war- 
ships. But I shall know no rest till I have placed 
our navy on a par for strength with our army." 
From that day to this he has gone steadily forward 
demanding of his people a strong army and a power- 
ful fleet. He now has both. He has pulled Ger- 
many out of danger and beyond the reach, for the 
moment at least, of any repetition of the catastrophe 
and humiliation of a hundred years ago. This is 
a solid fact, and for this situation the Emperor is 
largely, one might almost say wholly, responsible. 

One hears and one reads criticisms of the Em- 

104 



THE INDISCREET 

peror's habit of speaking and writing of " my 
navy." It is said that the other states of Germany 
have borne taxation to build the fleet, and that it 
is no more the Emperor's than that of the King 
of Bavaria, or of Wiirtemberg, or of Saxony. This 
is the petty, pin-pricking babble of boarding-school 
girls, or of those official supernumeraries who have 
turned sour in their retirement. Even the honest 
democrat is made indignant. If the German navy 
is not the work of William the Second, then its 
parentage is far to seek; and if the German navy 
is not proud to be called " my navy," it is wo fully 
lacking in gratitude to its creator. 

No man who looks back over his own career, say 
of twenty-five years, but is both chastened and 
amused. He is chastened by the unforeseen dangers 
that he has escaped ; he is amused by the certificates 
of failure, and the prophecies of disaster, that al- 
ways everywhere accompany the man who takes 
part in the game in preference to sitting in the re- 
served seats, or peeking through a hole in the fence. 
I have not been honored with any such intimate 
association with the German Emperor as would en- 
able me to say whether he has a highly developed 
sense of humor or not. I can only say for myself, 
that if I had lived through his Majesty's last 
twenty-five years, I should need no other fillip to 
digestion than my chuckles over the prophecies of 
my enemies. 

It has been said of him that he is volatile; that 
he flies from one task to another, finishing nothing; 
that his artistic tastes are the extravagant dreams 

105 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

of a Nero; that he loves publicity as a worn and 
obese soprano loves the centre of the stage; that 
his indiscretions would bring about the discharge 
of the most inconspicuous petty official. Others 
speak and write of him as a hero of mythology, as 
a mystic and a dreamer, looking for guidance to the 
traditions of mediaeval knighthood; while others, 
again, dub him a modernist, insist that he is a com- 
mercial traveller, hawking the wares of his country 
wherever he goes, and with an eye ever to the interests 
of Bremen and Hamburg and Essen and Pforzheim. 
Again, you hear that he is a Prussian junker, or 
that he is a cavalry officer, with all the prejudices 
and limitations of such a one; while, on the other 
hand, he is chided for enlisting the financial help of 
rich Jews and industrials. He is versatile, but ver- 
satility is a virtue so long as it does not extend 
to one's principles. Every man who has profoundly 
influenced the life of the world, from Moses to 
Lincoln, has been versatile. Carlyle goes so far as 
to say : " I confess, I have no notion of a truly 
great man that could not be all sorts of men." He 
speaks French well enough to address the Academie; 
he speaks English as well as a cultivated American, 
and no one speaks it more distinctly, more crisply, 
more trippingly upon the tongue, these days; he 
preaches a capital sermon; he is an accomplished 
binder of books; he is a successful and enthusiastic 
farmer, and he is frankly audacious in his loves 
and hatreds, his ambitions and his beliefs. He has, 
in short, no vermin blood in him at any rate. If 
you do not like him, you know why; and if you do, 

106 



THE INDISCREET 

you know why as easily. He even knows what he 
believes about woman's suffrage and about God, a 
rare conciseness of thinking in these troublous times. 

There stands before you a man apparently as 
sound in mind and in body as any man who treads 
German soil; a man of great vivacity of mind and 
manner, and of wholesome delight in living; who 
bears huge responsibilities with good humor, and 
that most unwholesome of all things, undisputed 
power, with humility. At a banquet in Brandenburg 
the 5th of March, 1890, speaking of his many 
voyages, he said : " He who, alone at sea, standing 
on the bridge, with nothing over him but God's 
heaven, has communed with himself will not mistake 
the value of such voyages. I could wish for many 
of my countrymen that they might live through 
similar hours of self-contemplation, where a man 
takes stock of what he has tried to do, and of what 
he has accomplished. Then it is that a man is cured 
of vanity, and we have all of us need of that/' 

It is obvious that a man cannot be modest, as the 
above quotation would indicate, and at the same time 
preening with vanity; a Sir Philip Sidney and a 
Jew peddler; a careless, dashing cavalry officer or 
proud Prussian squire, and at the same time a wary 
and astute insurance agent for the empire ; a preacher 
of duty and honor, and belief in God, and at the 
same time a political comedian deceiving his rivals 
abroad, and hoodwinking his subjects at home. 

Not a few men, even of slight powers of obser- 
vation and of meagre experience, have noted the 
strange fact that a blank and direct statement of the 

107 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

truth is very apt to be put down as a lie; and that 
a man who frankly expresses his beliefs and am- 
bitions, and openly goes about his business and his 
pleasures with no thought of concealment, is often 
regarded as Machiavellian and deceitful, because a 
timid and cautious world finds it hard to believe 
that he is really as audacious as he appears. 

Even those with the most limited list, of the great 
names of history at their disposal, cannot fail to re- 
member that simplicity and directness have in the 
persons of their highest exemplars been misunder- 
stood; hunted down like wild beasts, burned, cru- 
cified, and then, when they were well out of the 
way, crowned and held up to humanity as the saviors 
of the race. We will have none of them when au- 
thority, faith, truth, courage, show us our distorted 
images in the mirror of their lives. Crucify him, 
crucify him! has always been the cry when such a 
one asserts his moral kingship, or his sonship to God, 
or his audacious intention to live his own life; and 
in less tragic fashion, but none the less along the 
same lines, the world tends to pick at, and to fray 
the moral garments of, its leaders still to-day. 
When such a one succeeds through sheer simplicity, 
then that last feeble epitaph of mediocrity is applied 
to him : " He is lucky," because so few people realize 
that " luck," is merely not to be dependent upon 
luck. 

It is apparent from the quotations I have given, 
and many more of the same tenor are at our disposal, 
that the personality we are studying has a very defi- 
nite image of his place in the world, of the duties he 

108 



THE INDISCREET 

is called upon to perform, of his rights according to 
his own conception of his authority and responsi- 
bilities, and of his intentions. 

It is equally apparent that he looks upon history 
in quite another way than that usually accepted by 
the modern scientific historian. Taine and Green 
may explain everything, even kings and emperors, 
by the forces of climate, environment, and the slow- 
heaving influence of the people. This school of his- 
torians will tell you how Charlemagne, and Luther, 
and Cromwell, and Napoleon are to be accounted 
for by purely material explanations. 

The German Emperor apparently believes that the 
history of the world and the development of man- 
kind are due to a series of mighty factors, mysteri- 
ously endowed from on high and bearing the names 
of men, and not infrequently the names of emperors 
and kings. He is continually recalling his ancestors, 
the Great Elector, Frederick the Great, and William 
I, his grandfather. These men made Prussia and 
Prussia made the German Empire, he declares. To 
the Brandenburg Parliament he says: "It is the 
great merit of my ancestors that they have always 
stood aloof from and above all parties, and that they 
have always succeeded in making political parties 
combine for the welfare of the whole people." 

Due to a quality in the German character that 
need not be discussed here, it is true that they have 
been led, and driven, and welded by powerful in- 
dividuals. No Magna Charta, no Cromwell, no 
Declaration of Independence is to be found in Ger- 
man history. No vigorous demand from the people 

109 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

themselves marks their progress. You can read 
all there is of German history in the biographies of 
the Great Elector, of Frederick William the First, 
of Frederick the Great, of Yorck, of vom Stein, 
Hardenberg, Scharnhorst, and Bliicher, of Bis- 
marck, William I, and the present Emperor. 

What the Kaiser believes of history is true of 
German history. If he asserts himself as he does in 
Germany, it is because two hundred and fifty years 
of German history put him wholly and entirely in 
the right. It is to be presumed that what every stu- 
dent of German history may see for himself, has not 
escaped the flexible intelligence of the present Em- 
peror, and that is, that only the autocratic kings of 
Prussia succeeded, and that only an autocratic states- 
man succeeded, in bringing the whole country into 
line, by the acknowledgment of the King of Prus- 
sia, and his heirs forever, as German emperors. 

The first so-called indiscretion of the present Em- 
peror was magnificent. He dismissed Bismarck two 
years after he came to the throne. If you have ever 
been the owner of a yacht and your sailing-master 
has grown to be a tyrant, and you have taken your 
courage in your hand and bundled him over the side, 
you have had in a microcosmic way the sensations of 
such an experience. 

It is said that Bismarck, then seventy-five years 
old, and since 1862 accustomed to undisputed 
power, demurred to the wish of the Emperor that 
the other ministers should have access to him di- 
rectly, and not as heretofore only through the chan- 
cellor. It is said too that the matter-of-fact and 

no 



THE INDISCREET 

somewhat cynical Bismarck, had but scanty respect 
for the mystical view of his grandfather as a saint, 
that the Emperor everywhere proclaimed. In 1896, 
the 20th of February, in speaking of his grandfather, 
he refers to him as : " The Emperor William, that 
personality which has become for us in some sort 
that of a saint." 

Bismarck, too, objected to the Emperor's policy 
as regards the treatment of, and the legislation for, 
the workingmen. On February the 5th, 1890, he 
writes to Bismarck : " It is the duty of the state to 
regulate the duration and conditions of work in such 
manner that the health and the morality of the work- 
ingman may be preserved, and that his needs may be 
satisfied and his desire for equality before the law 
assured/' 

11 Now this is the tale of the Council the German 
Kaiser decreed, 



" And the young king said : — ' I have found it, the road to 
the rest ye seek: 

The strong shall wait for the weary, and the hale shall halt 
for the weak; 

With the even tramp of an army where no man breaks from 
the line, 

Ye shall march to peace and plenty, in the bond of brother- 
hood — sign ! ' " 

Whatever the reasons, the criticisms, or the causes, 
the man whom we have been describing was as cer- 
tain to dismiss Bismarck from office, as a bird is 
certain to fly and not to swim. The ruler who at 

III 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

a banquet May the 4th, 1891, proclaimed : " There is 
only one master of the nation : and that is I, and I 
\vill not abide any other "; and later, on the 16th of 
November, in an address to recruits said: " I need 
Christian soldiers, soldiers who say their Pater Nos- 
ier. The soldier should not have a will of his own, 
but you should all have but one will and that is my 
will; there is but one law for you and that is mine." 
Again, in addressing the recruits for the navy on 
the 5th of March, 1895, he said to them: "Just as 
I, as Emperor and ruler, consecrate my life and my 
strength to the service of the nation, so you are 
pledged to give your lives to me." Such a man 
could not share his rule with Bismarck. 

Bismarck left Berlin amid groans and tears. A 
prop had been rudely pushed from beneath the 
empire. The young Emperor would stumble and 
sway, and fall without this strong guide beside him. 
Men said this was the first sign of an imperious will 
and temper. 

There is an Arab proverb which runs : " When 
God wishes to destroy an ant he gives it wings." 
The Kaiser was to be given power for his own de- 
struction. But what has happened? Absolutely 
nothing of these evil prophecies. In 1884 Bismarck 
was saying to Gerhard Rohlf s, the African explorer : 
" The main thing is, we neither can nor really want 
to colonize. We shall never have a fleet like 
France. Our artisans and lawyers and time-expired 
soldiers are no good as colonists." If the ideas of 
William the Second were to prevail, it was time 
that Bismarck went over the side as pilot of the 

112 



THE INDISCREET 

ship of state. The Kaiser in appropriate terms 
regretted the loss of this tried public servant and 
said: iC However, the course remains the same — 
full steam ahead ! " 

Three days after the Jameson raid, on the 3d 
of January, 1896, the Kaiser telegraphed to Presi- 
dent Kriiger : "I beg to express to you my sincere 
congratulations that, without help from foreign 
powers, you have succeeded with your own people 
and by your own strength in driving out the armed 
bands which attempted to disturb the peace of your 
country, and in re-establishing order and in defend- 
ing the independence of your people from attacks 
from outside." 

On the 28th of October, 1908, The Daily Tele- 
graph of London published a long interview with 
the Emperor, the gist of which was that the British 
press and people continued to distrust him, while all 
the time he was and had been the friend of Great 
Britain. The Emperor cited instances of his friend- 
ship, declared the English were as mad as March 
hares not to believe in him; insisted that by reason 
of Germany's increasing foreign commerce, and on 
account of the growing menace to peace in the Pa- 
cific Ocean, Germany was determined to have an 
adequate fleet, which perhaps one day even England 
might be glad to have alongside of her own. 

In addition to these two incidents, the Emperor 
had written a letter to Lord Tweedmouth, who was 
already then a sick man, and probably not wholly 
responsible, in which it was said he had offered ad- 
vice as to the increase of the British navy. 

113 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

I have described these furious indiscretions, as 
they were called at the time, together, though they 
were years apart; for these utterances, and the con- 
stant repetition of his sense of responsibility to God, 
and not to the people he governs, are the heart of 
this whole contention that the German Emperor is 
indiscreet, is indiscreet even to the point of damaging 
his own prestige, and injuring his country's inter- 
ests abroad. 

Of all these so-called indiscretions there is the 
question to ask : Should these things have been said ? 
Should these things have been written? There are 
several things to be said in answer to these ques- 
tions. I shall treat each one in turn, but all these 
statements told the truth and cleared the air. The 
Kriiger telegram was not written by the Emperor, 
and when the worst construction is put upon it, it 
expressed what? It was merely the condemnation 
of freebooting methods, a condemnation, be it said, 
that it received from many right-minded and sin- 
cerely patriotic Englishmen, a condemnation too that 
was re-echoed from America. Only the honorable 
and winning personality of one of the most pa- 
triotic and charming men in England, Sir Starr 
Jameson, saved the raid from looking like piracy. 
A brave man spoke his mind about it, and he hap- 
pened to be in a position so conspicuous that the 
rumble of his words was heard afar. 

So far as The Daily Telegraph interview, is con- 
cerned, the secret history of the incident has never 
been fully divulged. One may say, however, with- 
out fear of contradiction that the importance of the 

114 



THE INDISCREET 

matter was unduly magnified, by those, both at home 
and abroad, who had something to gain by exag- 
geration. It is admitted on all sides by those best 
informed that at any rate the Emperor was neither 
responsible for the publication, a point to be kept 
in mind, nor for the choice of expressions used in 
the interview. 

The letter to Lord Tweedmouth was a friendly 
communication dealing with the conditions of the 
British and German fleets in the past and present, 
and without a word in it that might not have been 
published in The Times. It w r as quite innocent of 
the sinister significance placed upon it by those who 
had not seen it ; and the British Ministry declined to 
publish it for entirely different reasons, reasons in 
no way connected with the German Emperor. 

As we read The Daily Telegraph interview to- 
day, it is a plain document. Every word of it is 
true. The moment one looks at it from the point 
of view, that the Emperor of Germany is sincerely 
desirous of an amiable understanding with England, 
and that he is, for the peace and quiet of the world, 
working toward that end, there is no adverse criti- 
cism to be passed upon it. The English are thor- 
oughly and completely mistaken about the attitude 
of the German Emperor toward them. He is far 
and away the best and most powerful friend they 
have in Europe, and I, for one, would be willing to 
forgive him were he irritated at their misunder- 
standing of him. Personally, I have not the shadow 
of a doubt that had France or Russia treated the 
German Emperor with the cool distrust shown him 

115 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

by the British, the German army and fleet would 
have moved ere this. 

To those who know the Britisher he is forgiven 
for those luxuries of insular stupidity which punc- 
tuate his history. I know what a fine fellow he is, 
and I pass them by. Mr. Churchill speaks of the 
German fleet as a " luxury " ; but this is only one of 
those cold-storage impromptus that a reputation for 
cleverness must keep on hand, and when Lord Hal- 
dane in a clumsy attempt to praise the German Em- 
peror speaks of him as " half English " I laugh, as 
one laughs at the story of fat Gibbon kneeling to 
propose to a lady and requiring a servant to get him 
on his legs again. British courting often needs a 
lackey to keep it on its legs. 

Could anything be more burningly irritable to 
the Germans than those two unnecessary statements ? 
For the moment I am dealing with the attitude of 
the Emperor alone. Of the tirades of Chamberlain 
and Woltmann, Schmoller, Treitschke, Delbruck, 
Zorn, and other under-exercised professors, one may 
speak elsewhere. They are as unpardonable as the 
yokel rhetoric of our British friends. Of the Em- 
peror's insistence upon his friendliness, of his out- 
spoken betrayal of his real feelings, of his audacious 
policy of telling the blunt truth, I am, alas, no fair 
judge, for I am too entirely the advocate of keeping 
as few cats in the bag as possible. If these things 
had not been said and written, it is true that there 
would have been no tumult; having been said and 
written, I fail to see the slightest indication in the 
political life of either Germany or England to-day 

116 



THE INDISCREET 

that they did harm. Certainly, from his own point 
of view of what his position entails, they can hardly, 
as the radicals in Germany claim, be considered as 
unconstitutional or beyond his prerogative. 

When the German Emperor says : " I," he refers 
to the authority and responsibility and dignity of 
the German imperial crown. He is not magnifying 
his personal importance; he is emphasizing the dig- 
nity and importance of every German citizen. Let 
us try to understand the situation before we pass 
judgment! Both German radicalism and German 
socialism are peculiar to Germany, and everywhere 
misunderstood abroad. They both demand things 
of the government for the easement of their posi- 
tion, they both demand certain privileges, but they 
do not seek or want either authority or responsi- 
bility. Look at the figures of their proportionate 
increase and compare this with their actual influence 
in the Reichstag to-day. From 1881 to 191 1, here 
is the percentage of votes cast by the five representa- 
tive political parties : 





1881 


1893 


1911 


The National Liberals 

The Freisinnige and South 
German Volkspartei 

The Conservatives, including 
the Deutsche and Freikon- 
servative 


14.6 
23.2 

23.7 
23.2 
6.1 


12.9 
14.2 

20.4 
19.0 
23.2 


14.0 
13. 1 


The Centrum (Catholic party) 
The Social Democrats ....... 


16.3 
34.8 



117 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

If it were thought for a moment in Germany that 
the Socialists could come into real power, their vote 
and the number of their representatives in the 
Reichstag would dwindle away in one single elec- 
tion. 

The average German is no leader of men, no lover 
of an emergency, no social or political colonist, and 
he would shrink from the initiative and daring and 
endurance demanded by a real political revolution 
and a real change of authority, as a hen from water. 
The very quality in his ruler that we take for 
granted he must dislike is the quality that at the 
bottom of his heart he adores, and he reposes upon 
it as the very foundation of his sense of security, and 
as the very bulwark behind which he makes grimaces 
and shakes his fist at his enemies. Such men as the 
present chancellor, von Bethmann-Hollweg, a very 
calm spectator of his country's doings, and the Em- 
peror himself, both know this. 

As he looks at history and at life, it follows that 
he must be interested in everything that concerns 
his people, and not infrequently take a hand in set- 
tling questions, or in pushing enterprises, that seem 
too widely apart to be dealt with by one man, and 
too far afield for his constitutional obligations to 
profit by his interference. Certainly German prog- 
ress shows that the Germans can have no ground 
to quote : " Quicquid delirant reges, plectuntur 
Achivi," of their Emperor. 

In the discussion of this question, I may remind 
my American readers, although the German consti- 
tution is dealt with elsewhere, that there is one 

1x8 



THE INDISCREET 

difference between Germany and America politically, 
that must never be left out of our calculations. Such 
constitution and such rights as the German citizens 
have, were granted them by their rulers. The people 
of Prussia, or of Bavaria, or of Wiirtemberg, have 
not given certain powers to, and placed certain limi- 
tations upon, their rulers ; on the contrary, their rul- 
ers have given the people certain of their own pre- 
rogatives and political privileges, and granted to the 
people as a favor, a certain share in government 
and certain powers, that only so long as seventy 
years ago belonged to the sovereign alone. It is 
not what the people have won and then shared with 
the ruler, but it is what the ruler has inherited or 
won and shared with the people, that makes the 
groundwork of the constitutions of the various 
states, and of the empire of Germany. Nothing has 
been taken away from the people of Prussia or from 
any other state in Germany that they once had ; but 
certain rights and privileges have been granted by 
the rulers that were once wholly theirs. Bear this 
in mind, that it is William II and his ancestors who 
made Prussia Prussia, and voluntarily gave Prus- 
sians certain political rights, and not the citizens of 
Prussia who stormed the battlements of equal rights 
and made a treaty with their sovereign. 

The King of Prussia is the largest landholder and 
the richest citizen of Prussia. We have seen what 
he expects of his navy and of his army. Speaking 
on the 6th of September, 1894, he says : " Gentlemen, 
opposition on the part of the Prussian nobility to 
their King is a monstrosity." 

119 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

But arid details are not history, and in this con* 
nection let us have done with them. I have docu- 
mented this chapter with dates and quotations be- 
cause the situation politically, is so far away from 
the experience or knowledge of the American, that 
he must be given certain facts to assist his imagina- 
tion in making a true picture. I have done this, too, 
that the Kaiser may have his real background when 
we undertake to place him understandingly in the 
modern world. Here we have patriarchal rule still 
strong and still undoubting, coupled with the most 
successful social legislation, the most successful state 
control of railways, mines, and other enterprises; 
and a progress commercial and industrial during the 
last quarter of a century, second to none. 

This ruler believes it to be essentially a part of 
his business to be a Lorenzo de Medici to his people 
in art; their high priest in religion; their envoy ex- 
traordinary to foreign peoples; their watchful father 
and friend in legislation dealing with their daily 
lives; their war-lord, and their best example in all, 
that concerns domestic happiness and patriotic citi- 
zenship. He fulfils the words of the old German 
chronicle which reads : " Merito a nobis nostrisque 
posteris pater patriae appelatur quia erat egregius 
defensor et fortissimus propugnator nihili pendens 
vitam suam contra omnia adversa propter justitiam 
opponere." 

If history is not altogether valueless in its descrip- 
tion of symptoms, the Germans are of a softer mould 
than some of us, more malleable, rather-tempted to 
imitate than led by self-confidence to trust to their 

1 20 



THE INDISCREET 

own ideals, and less hard in confronting the de- 
mands of other peoples, that they should accept ab- 
sorption by them. 

Spurned and disdained by Louis XIV, they 
fawned upon him, built palaces like his, dressed like 
his courtiers, wrote and spoke his language, copied 
his literary models, and even bored themselves with 
mistresses because this was the fashion at Versailles. 
He stole from them, only to be thrown the kisses 
of flattery in return. He sneered at them, only to 
be begged for his favors in return. He took their 
cities in time of peace, and they acknowledged the 
theft by a smirking adulation that he allowed one 
of their number to be crowned a king. 

As for Napoleon, he performed a prolonged au- 
topsy upon the Germans. They were dismembered 
or joined together as suited his plans. At his beck 
they fought against one another, or against Russia, 
or against England. He tossed them crowns, that 
they still wear proudly, as a master tosses biscuits to 
obedient spaniels. He put his poor relatives to rule 
over them, here and there, and they were grateful. 
He marched into their present capital, took away 
their monuments, and the sword of Frederick the 
Great, and they hailed him with tears and rejoicing 
as their benefactor, while their wittiest poet and 
sweetest singer, lauded him to the skies. 

It is unpleasant to recall, but quite unfair to for- 
get, these happenings of the last two hundred years 
in the history of the German people. What would 
any man say, after this, was their greatest need, if 
not self-confidence; if not twenty-five years of peace 

121 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

to enable them to recover from their beatings and 
humiliation; if not a powerful army and navy to 
give them the sense of security, by which alone 
prosperity and pride in their accomplishments and in 
themselves can be fostered; if not a ruler who holds 
ever before their eyes their ideals and the unfaltering 
energy required of them to attain them! 

What nation would not be self-conscious after 
such dire experiences? What nation would not be 
tenderly sensitive as to its treatment by neighboring 
powers? What nation would not be even unduly 
keen to resent any appearance of an attempt to 
jostle it from its hard-won place in the sun? Their 
self -consciousness and sensitiveness and vanity are 
patent, but they are pardonable. As the leader of 
the Conservative party in the Reichstag, Doctor von 
Heydebrandt, speaking at Breslau in October, 191 1, 
anent the Morocco controversy, said, after alluding 
to the " bellicose impudence " of Lloyd-George : 
" The [British] ministry thrusts its fist under our 
nose, and declares, I alone command the world. It 
is bitterly hard for us who have 1870 behind us." 
They feel that they should no longer be treated to 
such bumptiousness. 

I trust that I am no swashbuckler, but I have the 
greatest sympathy with the present Emperor in his 
capacity as war-lord, and in his insistent stiffening 
of Germany's martial backbone. 

When shall we all recover from a certain inter- 
national sickliness that keeps us all feverish? The 
continual talk and writing about international 
friendships, being of the same family, or the same 

122 



THE INDISCREET 

race, the cousin propagandism in short, is irritat- 
ing, not helpful. I do not go to Germany to dis- 
cover how American is Germany, nor to England 
to discover how American is England; but to Ger- 
many to discover how German is Germany, to 
England to see how English is England. I much 
prefer Americans to either Germans or Englishmen, 
and they prefer Germans or Englishmen, as the 
case may be, to Americans. What spurious and 
milksoppy puppets we should be if it were not so. 
So long as there are praters going about insisting 
that Germany, with a flaxen pig-tail down her back, 
and England, in pumps instead of boots, and a 
poodle instead of a bulldog, shall sit forever in the 
moonlight hand in hand; or that America shall be- 
come a dandy, shave the chin-whisker, wear a Latin 
Quarter butterfly tie of red, white, and blue, and 
thrum a banjo to a little brown lady with oblique 
eyes and a fan, all day long; just so long will the 
bulldog snarl, the flaxen-haired maiden look sulky, 
the chin-whisker become stiffer and more provoca- 
tive, and the fluttering fan seen to threaten blows. 
We have been surfeited with peace talk till we 
are all irritable. One hundredth part of an ounce 
of the same quality of peace powders that we are 
using internationally would, if prescribed to a happy 
family in this or any other land, lead to dissensions, 
disobedience, domestic disaster, and divorce. Mr. 
Carnegie will have lived long enough to see more 
wars and international disturbances, and more dis- 
content born of superficial reading, than any man 
in history who was at the same time so closely con- 

123 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

nected with their origin. Perhaps it were better 
after all if our millionaires were educated! 

The peace party need war just as the atheists 
need God, otherwise they have nothing to deny, 
nothing to attack. Peace is a negative thing that 
no one really wants, certainly not the kind of peace 
of which there is so much talking to-day, which is 
a kind of castrated patriotism. Peace is not that. 
Peace can never be born of such impotency. When 
German statesmen declare roundly that they will 
not discuss the question of disarmament, th^y are 
merely saying that they will not be traitors to their 
country. If the Emperor rattles the sabre occasion- 
ally, it is because the time has not come yet, when 
this German people can be allowed to -forget what 
they have suffered from foreign conquerors, and 
what they must do to protect themselves from such 
a repetition of history. 

When the final judgment is passed upon the Em- 
peror, we must recall his deep religious feeling that 
he is inevitably an instrument of God ; his ingrained 
and ineradicable method of reading history as 
though it were a series of the ipse dixits of kings; 
his complacent neglect of how the work of the 
world is done by patient labor; of how works of art 
are only born of travail and tears : his obsession by 
that curious psychology of kings that leads them 
to believe that they are somehow different, and 
under other laws, as though they lived in another 
dimension of space. In addition, he is a man of 
unusually rapid mental machinery, of overpowering 
self-confidence, of great versatility, of many advan- 

124 



THE INDISCREET 

tages of training and experience, and, above all, he 
is unhampered. He is answerable directly to no 
one, to no parliament, to no minister, to no people. 
He is father, guardian, guide, schoolmaster, and 
priest, but in no sense a servant responsible to any 
master save one of his own choosing. 

The only wonder is that he is not insupportable. 
Those who have come under the spell of his person- 
ality declare him to be the most delightful of com- 
panions; what Germany has grown to be under his 
reign of twenty-five years all the world knows, much 
of the world envies, some of the world fears; what 
his own people think of him can best be expressed 
by the statement that his supremacy was never more 
assured than to-day. 

I agree that no one man can be credited with the 
astonishing expansion of Germany in all directions 
in the last thirty years; but so interwoven are the 
advice and influence, the ambitions and plans, of 
the German Emperor with the progress of the Ger- 
man people, that this one personality shares his 
country's successes as no single individual in any 
other country can be said to do. 

Whether he likes Americans or not one can hardly 
know. No doubt he has made many of them think 
so; and, alas, we suffer from a national hallucina- 
tion that we are liked abroad, when as a matter of 
fact we are no more liked than others; and in 
cultured centres we are in addition, laughed at by 
the careless and sneered at by the sour. 

That the Kaiser is liked by Americans, both by 
those who have met him and by those who have 

125 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

not, is, I think, indisputable. He is of the stuff that 
would have made a first-rate American. He would 
have been a sovereign there as he is a sovereign 
here. He would have enjoyed the risks, and tur- 
moil, and competition; he would have enjoyed the 
fine, free field of endeavor, and he would have 
jousted with the best of us in our tournament of life, 
which has trained as many knights sans peur et 
sans reproche as any country in the world. 

I believe in a man who takes what he thinks be- 
longs to him, and holds it against the world ; in the 
man who so loves life that he keeps a hearty ap- 
petite for it and takes long draughts of it; who is 
ever ready to come back smiling for another round 
with the world, no matter how hard he has been 
punished. I believe that God believes in the man 
who believes in Him, and therefore in himself. 
Why should I debar a man from my sympathy be- 
cause he is a king or an emperor? I admire your 
courage, Sir; I love your indiscretions; I applaud 
your faith in your God, and your confidence in 
yourself, and your splendid service to your country. 
Without you Germany would have remained a 
second-rate power. Had you been what your critics 
pretend that they would like you to be, Germany 
would have been still ruling the clouds. 

Here's long life to your power, Sir, and to your 
possessions, and to you! And as an Anglo-Saxon, 
I thank God, that all your countrymen are not like 
you! 



126 



IV 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES AND THE 

PRESS 

IN the days when Bismarck was welding the 
German states into a federal organization and 
finally into an empire, he used the press to spray 
his opinions, wishes, and suspicions over those he 
wished to instruct or to influence. He used it, too, 
to threaten or to mislead his enemies at home 
and abroad. The Hamburger Nachrichten was the 
newspaper for which he wrote at one time, and 
which remained his confidential organ, though as 
his power grew he used other journals and journal- 
ists as well. 

As Germany has few traditions of freedom, hav- 
ing rarely won liberty as a united people, but having 
been beaten into national unity by her political 
giants, or her robuster sovereigns, so the press be- 
fore and during Bismarck's long reign, from 1862 
to 1890, was kept well in hand by those who ruled. 
It is only lately that caricature, criticism, and op- 
position have had freer play. That a journalist like 
Maximilian Harden (a friend and confidant of Bis- 
marck, by the way) should be permitted to write 
without rebuke and without punishment that the 
present Kaiser " has all the gifts except one, that 

127 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

of politics," marks a new license in journalistic de- 
bate. That this same person was able, single- 
handed, to bring about the exposure and downfall 
of a cabal of decadent courtiers whose influence 
with the Emperor was deplored, proves again how 
completely the German press has escaped from cer- 
tain leading-strings. A sharp criticism of the Em- 
peror in die Post, even as lately as 191 1, excited 
great interest, and was looked upon as a very daring 
performance. 

There are some four thousand daily and more 
than three thousand weekly and monthly publica- 
tions in Germany to-day; but neither the press as 
a whole, nor the journalists, with a few exceptions, 
exert the influence in either society or politics of 
the press in America and in England. As com- 
pared with Germany, one is at once impressed with 
the greater number of journals and their more ef- 
fective distribution at home. In America there 
are 2,472 daily papers; 16,269 weeklies; and 2,769 
monthlies. Triweekly and quarterly publications 
added bring the total to 22,806. One group of 200 
daily papers claim a circulation of 10,000,000, while 
five magazines have a total circulation of 5,000,000. 
It is calculated that there is a daily, a weekly, and a 
monthly magazine circulated for every single family 
in America. Not an unmixed blessing, by any 
means, when one remembers that thousands, un- 
trained to think and uninterested, are thus dusted 
with the widely blown comments of undigested 
news. Editorial comment of any serious value is, 
of course, impossible, and the readers are given a 

128 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 

strange variety of unwholesome intellectual food to 
gulp down, with mental dyspepsia sure to follow, 
a disease which is already the curse of the times 
in America, where superficiality and insincerity are 
leading the social and political dance. 

To carry the comparison further, there are 22, 
806 newspapers published in America; 9,500 in 
England; 8,049 in Germany; and 6,681 in France: 
or 1 for every 4,100 of the population in America; 
1 for every 4,700 in Great Britain; 1 for every 7,- 
800 in Germany, and 1 for every 5,900 in France. 

That a prime minister should have been a con- 
tributor to the press, as was Lord Salisbury ; that a 
correspondent or editorial writer of a newspaper 
should find his way into cabinet circles, into diplo- 
macy, or into high office in the colonies; that the 
editor and owner of a great newspaper should be- 
come an ambassador to England, as in the case of 
Mr. Reid, is impossible in Germany. The character 
of the men who take up the profession of journalism 
suffers from the lack of distinction and influence 
of their task. Raymond, Greeley, Dana, Laffan, 
Godkin, in America, and Delane, Hutton, Lawson, 
and their successors, Garvin, Strachey, Robinson, in 
England, are impossible products of the German 
journalistic soil at present. 

There have been great changes, and the place of 
the newspaper and the power of the journalist is 
increasing rapidly, but the stale atmosphere of cen- 
sordom hangs about the press even to-day. Freedom 
is too new to have bred many powerful pens or 
personalities, and the inconclusive results of politi- 

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GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

cal arguments, written for a people who are com- 
paratively apathetic, lessen the enthusiasm of the 
political journalist. There are not three editors in 
Germany who receive as much as six thousand 
dollars a year, and the majority are paid from 
twelve hundred to three thousand a year. This does 
not make for independence. I am no believer in 
great wealth as an incentive to activity, but certainly 
solvency makes for emancipation from the more 
debasing forms of tyranny. 

Several of the more popular newspapers are 
owned and controlled by the Jews, and to the Ameri- 
can, with no inborn or traditional prejudice against 
the Jews as a race, it is somewhat difficult to under-* 
stand the outspoken and unconcealed suspicion and 
dislike of them in Germany. There is no need to 
mince matters in stating that this suspicion and dis- 
like exist. A comedy called " The Five Frank- 
furters " has been given in all the principal cities 
during the last year and has had a long run in Ber- 
lin. It is a scathing caricature of certain Jewish pe- 
culiarities of temperament and ambition. 

There is even an anti-semitic party, small though 
it be, in the Reichstag, while the party of the Centre, 
of the Conservatives and the Agrarians, is frankly 
anti-semitic as well. No Jew can become an officer 
in the army, no Jew is admitted to one of the Ger- 
man corps in the universities, no Jew can hold office 
of importance in the state, and I presume that no 
unbaptized Jew is received at court. I am bound 
to record my personal preference for the English 
and American treatment of the Jew. In England 

130 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 

they have made a Jew their prime minister, and in 
America we offer him equal opportunities with other 
men, and applaud him whole-heartedly when he suc- 
ceeds, and thump him soundly with our criticism 
when he misbehaves. The German fears him; we 
do not. We have made Jews ambassadors, tlrey 
have served in our army and navy, and not a few 
of them rank among our sanest and most generous 
philanthropists. 

To a certain extent society of the higher and 
official class shuts its doors against him. One of 
the well-known restaurants in Berlin, until the death 
of its founder, not long ago, refused admission to 
Jews. 

I venture to say that no intelligent American stops 
to think whether the Speyer brothers, or Kahn, or 
Schiff, or the members of the house of Rothschild, 
are Jews or not, in estimating their political, social, 
and philanthropic worth. Even as long ago as the 
close of the fourteenth century the great strife be- 
tween the princes of Germany and the free cities 
ceased, in order that both might unite to plunder 
the Jews. 

Luther preached : " Burn their synagogues and 
schools; what will not burn bury with earth that 
neither stone nor rubbish remain. ,, " In like man- 
ner break into and burn their houses. " " Forbid 
their rabbis to teach on pain of life and limb/' 
' Take away all their prayer-books and Talmuds, 
in which are nothing but godlessness, lies, cursing, 
and s wearing/ ' In the chronicles of the time oc- 
curs frequently " Judaei occisi, combusti." 

131 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

The German comes by his dislike of the Jew- 
through centuries of traditional conflict, plunder, 
and hatred, and the very moulder of the present 
German speech, Luther, was a furious offender. 
The Jews have been materialists through all ages, 
claim the Germans : " The Jews require a sign, and 
the Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ 
crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto 
the Greeks foolishness." It is to be in our day the 
battle of battles, they claim, whether we are to be 
socially, morally, and politically orientalized by this 
advance guard of the Orient, the Jews, or whether 
we are to preserve our occidental ideals and tradi- 
tions. Many more men see the conflict, they main- 
tain, than care to take part in it. The money-mar- 
kets of the world are ramparts that few men care 
to storm, but, if the independent and the intelligent 
do not withstand this semitization of our institu- 
tions, the ignorant and the degraded will one day 
take the matter into their own hands, as they have 
done before, and as they do to this day in some parts 
of Russia. 

There are 600,000 Jews in Germany, 400,000 of 
them in Prussia and 100,000 of these in Berlin. In 
New York City alone there are more than 900,000. 
They are always strangers in our midst. They are 
of another race. They have other standards and 
other allegiances. Perhaps we are all of us, the 
most enlightened of us, provincial at bottom, we 
like to know who and what our neighbors are, and 
whence they came; and we dislike those who are 
outside our racial and social experiences, and our 

132 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 

moral and religious habits, and the Jew is always, 
everywhere, a foreigner. At any rate, so the Ger- 
man maintains. 

Strange as it may sound in these days, the Ger- 
mans are not at heart business men. There are more 
eyes with dreams in them in Germany than in all 
the world besides. They work hard, they increase 
their factories, their commerce, but their hearts are 
not in it. The Jew has amassed an enormous part 
of the wealth of Germany, considering his small 
proportion of the total population. The German, 
because he is not at heart a trader, is an easy prey 
for him. 

These things trouble us in America very little, 
and we smile cynically at the not altogether un- 
truthful portraits of " Potash and Pearlmutter," and 
their vermin-like business methods. There is an 
undercurrent of feeling in America, that the virile 
blood is still there which will stop at nothing to 
throw off oppression, whether from the Jew or 
from any one else. If we are pinched too hard 
financially, if confiscation by the government or by 
individuals goes too far, no laws even will restrain 
the violence which will break out for liberty. So 
we are at peace with ourselves and with others, 
trusting in that quiet might which will take govern- 
ing into its own hands, at all hazards, if the state 
of affairs dmands it. 

With the Germans it is different. No people of 
modern times has been so harried and harrowed 
as these Germans. The Thirty Years' war left 
them in such fear and poverty that even cannibalism 

133 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

existed, and this was years after Massachusetts and 
Maryland were settled. But nothing has tarnished 
their idealism. Whether as followers of Charle- 
magne, or as hordes of dreamers seeking to save 
Christ's tomb and cradle in the Crusades, or as in- 
toxicated barbarians insisting that their emperor 
must be crowned at Rome, or as the real torch- 
bearers of the Reformation, or even now as dream- 
ers, philosophers, musicians, and only industrial and 
commercial by force of circumstances, they are, 
least of all the peoples, materialists. 

They have given the world lyric poetry, music, 
mythology, philosophy, and these are still their 
souls' darlings. They entered the modern world 
just as science began to marry with commerce and 
industry, and so their unworn, fresh, and youthful 
intellectual vigor found expression in industry. 
Renan writes that he owes his pleasure in intellec- 
tual things to a long ancestry of non-thinkers, and 
he claims to have inherited their stored-up mental 
forces. Germany is not unlike that. Her recent 
industrial and intellectual activity may be the re- 
lease from bondage, of the centuries of stored-up 
Intellectual energy from the " Woods of Ger- 
T many." 

It is true that they are easily governed and ame- 
nable, but this is due not wholly to the fact that they 
have been so long under the yoke of rulers, or be- 
cause they are of cow-like disposition, but because 
their ideals are spiritual, not material. The Ameri- 
can seeks wealth, the Englishman power, the French- 
man notoriety, the German is satisfied with peaceful 

134 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 

enjoyment of music, poetry, art, and friendly and 
very simple intercourse with his fellows. 

Certainly I am not the man to say he is wrong, 
when I see how spiritual things in my own country 
are cut out of the social body as though they were 
annoying and dangerous appendices. 

The German of this type looks down upon 
the spiritual and intellectual development of other 
countries as far inferior to his own. Such an one 
in talking to an Englishman feels that he is convers- 
ing with a high-spirited, thoroughbred horse; to a 
Frenchman, as though he were a cynical monkey; 
to an American, as though he were a bright youth 
of sixteen. 

The German considers his dealings with the in- 
tangible things of life to be a higher form, indeed 
the highest form, of intellectual employment. He 
is therefore racially, historically, and by tempera- 
ment jealous or contemptuous, according to his 
station in life, of the cosmopolitan exchanger of the 
world, the Jew. He denies to him either patriotism 
or originality, and looks upon him as merely a dis- 
tributer, whether in art, literature, or commerce, as 
an exchanger who amasses wealth by taking toll of 
other men's labor, industry, and intellect. It has 
not escaped the German of this temper, that the 
whirling gossip and innuendoes that have lately 
annoyed the present party in power in England, have 
had to do with three names : Isaacs, Samuels, and 
Montagu, all Jews and members of the government. 

German politics, German social life, and the Ger- 
man press cannot be understood without this ex- 

135 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

planation. The German sees a danger to his hardly- 
won national life in the cosmopolitanism of the 
Jew; he sees a danger to his duty-doing, simple- 
living, and hard-working governing aristocracy in 
the tempting luxury of the recently rich Jew; and 
besides these objective reasons, he is instinctively 
antagonistic, as though he were born of the clouds 
of heaven and the Jew of the clods of earth. This 
does not mean that the German is a believer, in the 
orthodox sense of the word, for that he is not. He 
loves the things of the mind not because he thinks 
of them as of divine creation, and as showing an 
allegiance to a divine Creator, but because they are 
the playthings of his own manufacture that amuse 
him most. His superiority to other nations is that 
he claims to enjoy maturer toys. Not even France 
is so entirely unencumbered by orthodox restraints 
in matters of belief. 

So far, therefore, as the German press is Jew- 
controlled, it is suspected as being not German 
politically, domestically, or spiritually; as not being 
representative, in short. It should be added that, 
though this is the attitude of the great majority in 
Germany, there is a small class who recognize the 
pioneer work that the Jew has done. Few men are 
more respected there, and few have more influence 
than such men as Ballin and Rathenau and others. 
For the very reason that the German is an idealist 
the Jew has been of incomparable value to him in 
the development of his industrial, commercial, and 
financial affairs. Not only as a scientific finan- 
cier has he helped, not only has he provided am- 

136 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 

munition when German industrial undertakings 
were weak and stumbling, but along the lines of 
scientific research, as chemists, physicists, artists — 
perhaps no one stands higher than the Jew Lieber- 
mann as a painter—the Jew has done yeoman ser- 
vice to the country in return for the high wages 
that he has taken. There are Germans who recog- 
nize this, and there are in the Jewish world not a 
few men to whom the doors of enlightened society 
are always open. 

Whatever one may feel of instinctive dislike, the 
open-minded observers of the historical progress of 
Germany, all recognize that Germany would not be 
in the foremost place she now occupies in the com- 
petitive markets of the world, if she had not had the 
the patriotic, intelligent, and skilful backing of her 
better-class Jewish citizens. 

Printing was born in Germany, and the town of 
Augsburg had a newspaper as early as 1505, while 
Berlin had a newspaper in 161 7 and Hamburg in 
1628. Every foreigner who knows Germany at all, 
knows the names of the Kolnische Zeitung, the 
Lokal Anzeiger and Der Tag, Hamburger Nach- 
richten, Berliner Tageblatt, Frankfurter Zeitung, 
and the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, this last 
the official organ of the foreign office. The Neue 
Preussische Zeitung, better known by its briefer 
title of Kreuz Zeitung, is a stanch conservative or- 
gan, and for years has published the scholarly 
comments once a week of Professor Schiemann, 
who is a political historian of distinction, and a 
trusted friend of the Emperor. The Deutsche 

137 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Tageszeitung is the organ of the Agrarian League. 
The Reichsbote is a conservative journal and the 
organ of the orthodox party in the state church. 
Vorwarts is the organ of the socialists and, what- 
ever one may think of its politics, one of the best- 
edited, as it is one of the best- written, newspapers 
in Germany. The Zukunft, a weekly publication, 
is the personal organ of Harden, is Harden, in fact. 
The Zukunft in normal years sells some 22,000 
copies at 20 marks, giving an income of 440,000 
marks; this with the advertisements gives an in- 
come of say 500,000 marks. The expenses are about 
350,000 marks, leaving a net income to this daring 
and accomplished journalist of 150,000 marks a 
year. In Germany such an income is great wealth. 
The Zukunft and its success is a commentary of 
value upon the appreciation of, as well as the rarity 
of, independent journalism in Germany. 

The Vossische Zeitung, or " Aunty Voss " as it 
is nicknamed, is a solid, bourgeois sheet and mod- 
erately radical in tone. It is proper, wipes its feet 
before entering the house, and may be safely left 
in the servants' hall or in the school-room. Die Post 
represents the conservative party politically, is wel- 
come in rich industrial circles, and is rather liberal 
in religious matters, though hostile to the govern- 
ment in matters of foreign politics, and of less in- 
fluence at home than the frequent quotations from 
it in the British press would lead one to suppose. 
The two official organs of the Catholics are the 
Germania and the Kolnische Volks Zeitung, of 
Cologne, whose editor is the well-known Julius 

138 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 

Bachern. The Lokal Anzeiger and the Tageblatt 
of Berlin attempt, with no small legree of suc- 
cess, American methods, and give out several edi- 
tions a day with particular reference to the latest 
news. 

Leipsic, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Strassburg, 
Dresden, Konigsberg, Breslau, with its Schlessische 
Zeitung, and the Rhine provinces and the steel and 
iron industries represented by the Rheinisch-West- 
falische Zeitung, and other cities and towns have 
local newspapers. A good example of such little- 
known provincial newspapers is the Augsburger 
Abendzeitung, with its first-rate reports of the par- 
liamentary proceedings in Bavaria and its well- 
edited columns. The circulation of these journals 
is, from our point of view, small. The Berliner 
Tageblatt in a recent issue declares its paid circula- 
tion to have been 73,000 in 1901 ; 106,000 in 1905; 
190,000 in 1910; and 208,000 in 191 1. 

The custom in Germany of eating in restaurants, 
of taking coffee in the cafes, of writing one's letters 
and reading the newspapers there, no doubt has 
much to do with the small subscription lists of Ger- 
man journals of all kinds, whether daily, weekly, 
or monthly. The German economizes even in these 
small matters. A German family, or small cafe or 
restaurant, may, for a small sum, have half a dozen 
or more weekly and monthly journals left, and 
changed each week; thus they are circulated in a 
dozen places at the expense of only one copy. 
Where a family of similar standing in America 
takes in regularly two morning papers and an even- 

139 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

ing paper, several weekly and monthly, and perhaps 
one or two foreign journals, the German family 
may take one morning paper. The custom of hav- 
ing half a dozen newspapers served with the morn- 
ing meal, as is done in the larger houses in America 
and in England, is practically unknown. Economy 
is one reason, indifference is another, provincial and 
circumscribed interests are others. 

The German has not our keen appetite for what 
we call news, which is often merely surmises in 
bigger type. Only the very small number who have 
travelled and made interests and friends for them- 
selves out of their own country, have any feeling of 
curiosity even, about the political and social tides 
and currents elsewhere. An astounding number of 
Germans know Sophocles, ^Eschylus, and Shake- 
speare better than we do, but they know nothing, 
and care nothing, for the sizzling, crackling stream 
of purposeless incident, and sterile comment, that 
pours in upon the readers of American newspapers, 
and which has had its part in making us the largest 
consumers of nerve-quieting drugs in the world. 
All too many of the pens that supply our press are 
without education, without experience, without re- 
sponsibility or restraint. What Mommsen writes 
of Cicero applies to them : " Cicero was a jour- 
nalist in the worst sense of the term, over-rich in 
words as he himself confesses, and beyond all im- 
agination poor in thought." 

No one of these journals pretends to such power 
or such influence as certain great dailies in America 
and in England. They have not the means at their 

140 ■» 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 

command to buy much cable or telegraphic news, 
and lacking a press tariff for telegrams, they are 
the more hampered. The German temperament, 
and the civil-service and political close-corporation 
methods, make it difficult for the journalist to go 
far, either socially or politically. The German has 
been trained in a severe school to seek knowledge, 
not to look for news, and he does not make the same 
demands, therefore, upon his newspaper. 

German relations with the outside world are of 
an industrial and commercial kind, and until very 
lately the German has not been a traveller, and is 
not now an explorer, and their colonies are unim- 
portant; consequently there is no very keen inter- 
est on the part of the bulk of the people in foreign 
affairs. Even Sir Edward Grey's answering speech 
on the Morocco question did not appear in full in 
Berlin until the following day, though Germany had 
roused itself to an unusual pitch of excitement and 
expectancy. 

As the Germans are not yet political animals, so 
their newspapers reflect an artificial political enthu- 
siasm. Society, too, is as little organized as poli- 
tics. There are no great figures in their social 
world. A Beau Brummel, a d'Orsay, a Lady Pal- 
merston, a Lady Londonderry, a Duke of Devon- 
shire, a Gladstone, a Disraeli, a Rosebery, would be 
impossible in Germany, especially if they were in 
opposition to the party in power. When a chan- 
cellor or other minister is dismissed by the Kaiser, 
he simply disappears. He does not add to the weight 
of the opposition, but ceases to exist politically. 

141 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

This has two bad results: it does not strengthen 
the criticism of the administration, and it makes 
the office-holder very loath to leave office, and to 
surrender his power. An ex-cabinet officer in Amer- 
ica or in England remains a valuable critic, but an 
ex-chancellor in Germany becomes a social recluse, 
a political Trappist. Even the leading political fig- 
ures are after all merely shadowy servants of the 
Emperor. They represent neither themselves nor 
the people, and such subserviency kills independence 
and leaves us with mediocrities gesticulating in the 
dark, and making phrases in a vacuum. 

There are, it is true, charming hostesses in Ber- 
lin, and ladies who gather in their drawing-rooms 
all that is most interesting in the intellectual and 
political life of the day; but they are almost with- 
out exception obedient to the traditional officialdom, 
leaning upon a favor that is at times erratic, and 
without the daring of independence which is the 
salt of all real personality. 

There are, too, country-houses. One castle in 
Bavaria, how well I remember it, and the accom- 
plished charm of its owner, who had made its 
grandeur cosey, a feat, indeed! But all this is de- 
tached from the real life of the nation, which is 
forever taking its cue from the court, leaving any 
independent or imposing social and political life 
benumbed and without vitality. There is no free 
and stalwart opposition, no centres of power; and 
much as one tires of the incessant and feverish strife 
political and social at home, one returns to it taking 
a long breath of the free air after this hot-house 

142 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 

atmosphere, where the thermometer is regulated by 
the wishes of an autocrat. 

The press necessarily reflects these conditions. 
The Social Democrats, divided into many small 
parties, and the Agrarians and Ultramontanes, di- 
vided as well, give the press no single point of lev- 
erage. These political parties wrangle among them- 
selves over the dish of votes, but what is put into 
the dish comes from a master over whom they have 
no control. If they upset the dish they are turned 
out as they were in 1878, 1887, 1893, an d 1907, and 
when they return they are better behaved. 

The parties themselves are not real, since thou- 
sands of voters lean to the left merely to express 
their discontent; but they would desert the Social 
Democrats at once did they think there was a chance 
of real governing power for them. A small indus- 
trial was warned of the awful things that would 
happen did the Socialists come into power. " Ah," 
he replied, " but the government would not permit 
that ! " What has the press to chronicle with in- 
sistence and with dignity of such flabby political 
and social conditions? 

The press may be, and often is, annoying, as mos- 
quitoes are annoying, but its campaigns are danger- 
ous to nobody. As I write, it is hard to believe that 
within a few days the members of a new Reichstag 
are to be elected. There are political meetings, it is 
true, there are articles and editorials in the news- 
papers, there is some languid discussion at dinner- 
tables and in society, but there is a sense of un- 
reality about it all, as though men were thinking: 

143 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Nothing of grave importance can happen in any 
case! We shall have something to say farther on 
of political Germany; here it suffices to say that the 
press of Germany betrays in its political writing 
that it is dealing with shadows, not with realities. 
" They have been at a great feast of language, and 
stolen the scraps/' that's all. 

The snarling Panther that was sent to Agadir, 
teeth and claws showing, came back looking like an 
adventurous tomcat that wished only to hide itself 
meekly in its accustomed haunts; and its unobtru- 
sive bearing seemed to say, the less said about the 
matter the better. What a storm of obloquy would 
have burst upon such inept diplomacy in America, 
or in England, or even in France. Not so here. 
Everybody was sore and sorry, but the newspa- 
pers and the journalists could raise no protest that 
counted. It is all explained by the fact that the 
people do not govern, have nothing to do with the 
whip or the reins, nor have they any constitutional 
way of changing coachmen, or of getting possession 
of whip and reins; and hooting at the driver, and 
jeering at the tangled whip-lash and awkwardly 
held reins, is poor-spirited business. Only one po- 
litical writer, Harden, does it with any effect, and 
his pen is said to have upset the Caprivi government. 

As one reads the newspapers day by day, and the 
weekly and monthly journals, it becomes apparent 
that the German imagines he has done something 
when he has had an idea; just as the Frenchman im- 
agines he has done something when he has made an 
epigram. We are less given either to thinking or 

144 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 

phrasing, and far less gifted in these directions than 
either Germans or Frenchmen, and perhaps that is 
the reason we have actually done so much more 
politically. We do things for lack of something 
better to do, while our neighbors find real pleasure 
in their dreams, and take great pride in their epi- 
grams. 

As all great writing, from that of Xenophon and 
Caesar till now, is born of action or the love of it, 
or as a spiritual incitement to action, so a people 
with little opportunity for political action, and no 
centres of social life with a real sway or sovereignty, 
cannot create or offer substance for the making of 
a powerful and independent press. 

There is no New York, no Paris, no London, no 
Vienna even, in Germany. Berlin is the capital, but 
it is not a capital by political or social evolution, 
but by force of circumstances. Germany has many 
centres which are not only not interested in Berlin, 
but even antagonistic. Munich, Hamburg, Bremen, 
Leipsic, Frankfort, Dresden, Breslau, and besides 
these, twenty-six separate states with their capitals, 
their rulers, courts, and parliaments, go to make up 
Germany, and perhaps you are least of all in Ger- 
many when you are in Berlin. It is true that we 
have many States, many capitals, and many gov- 
ernors in America, but they have all grown from one, 
and not, as in Germany, been beaten into one, and 
held together more from a sense of danger from the 
outside than from any interest, sympathy, and liking 
for one another. 

With us each State, too, has a powerful repre- 

145 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

sentation both in the Senate and in the House 
of Representatives, which keeps the interest alive, 
while in Germany Prussia is overwhelmingly pre- 
ponderant. In the upper house, or Bundesrat, 
Prussia has 1 7 representatives ; next comes Bavaria 
with 6; and the other states with 4 or less, out of a 
total of 58 members In the Reichstag, out of a 
total of 397 representatives, Prussia has 236. 

Political society is not all centred in Berlin, as it 
is in London, Paris, or Washington, nor is social 
life there representative of all Germany. Berlin's 
stamp of approval is not necessary to play, or opera, 
or book, or picture, or statue, or personality. In- 
deed, Berlin often takes a lead in such matters from 
other cities in Germany where the artistic life and 
history are more fully developed, as, for instance, 
in other days, Weimar, and now Munich, Dresden, 
and, in literary matters, Leipsic. A recent example 
of this, though of small consequence in itself, is the 
case of the opera, the " Rosen Kavalier," which was 
given repeatedly in Dresden and Leipsic, whither 
many Berlin people went to hear it, before the au- 
thorities in Berlin could be persuaded to produce it. 

The nobility, the society heavy artillery, come 
to Berlin only for three or four weeks, from the 
middle of January to the middle of February, to 
pay their respects to their sovereign at the various 
court functions given during that time. They live 
in the country and only visit in Berlin. It is com- 
plained, that the double taxation incident to the up- 
keep of an establishment both in town and in the 
country, makes it impossible for them to be much 

146 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 

in Berlin. They stay in hotels and in apartments, 
and are mere passing visitors in their own capital. 
They have, therefore, practically no influence upon 
social life, and Berlin is merely the centre of the 
industrial, military, official, and political society of 
Prussia. It is the clearing-house of Germany, but by 
no means the literary, artistic, social, or even the po- 
litical capital of Germany, as London is the English, 
or Paris the French, or as Washington is fast grow- 
ing to be the American, capital. 

There is no training-ground for an accomplished 
or man-of-the-world journalist, and the views and 
opinions of a journalist who is more or less of a 
social pariah, and he still is that with less than half 
a dozen exceptions, and of a man who begs for 
crumbs from the press officials at the foreign or 
other government offices, are neither written with 
the grip of the independent and dignified chronicler, 
nor received with confidence and respect by the 
reader. 

It may be a reaction from this negligence with 
which they are treated that produces a quality, both 
in the writing and in the illustrations of the German 
newspapers, which is unknown in America. Many 
of the illustrated papers indulge in pictorial flings 
which may be compared only to the scribbling and 
coarse drawings, in out-of-the-way places, of dirty- 
minded boys. With the exception of the well-known 
Fliegende Blatter, Kladderadatsch, and one or two 
less representative, there is nothing to compare with 
the artistic excellence and restrained good taste of 
Life or Punch, for example. 

147 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

There is one illustrated paper published in Mu- 
nich, SimplicissimuSy which deserves more than neg- 
ligent and passing comment. It has two artists of 
whom I know nothing except what I have learned 
from their work, Th. Th. Heine and Gulbransson. 
These men are Aristophanic in their ability as 
draughtsmen and as censors, in striking at the weak- 
nesses, political, military, and official, of their coun- 
trymen. Their work is something quite new in 
Germany, and worthy of comparison with the best 
in any country. It is not elegant, it is Rabelaisian ; 
and though I have nothing to retract in regard to 
coarseness, and no wish to commend the attitude 
taken toward German political and social life, in fair- 
ness one is bound to call attention to the pictorial 
work in this particular paper as of a very high order, 
and to recognize its power. If Heine could have 
turned his wit into the drawings of Hogarth, we 
should have had something not unlike Sitnplicis- 
simuSy and any German annoyed at the criticisms 
of his national life from the pen of a foreigner, may 
well turn to his own Simplicissimus, and be humbly 
grateful that no foreign pen-point can possibly pierce 
more deeply, than this domestic pencil, at work in 
his own country. 

The danger for the critic and the wit, which few 
avoid, is that with incomparable advantages over 
his opponent he will not play fair. In spite of the 
awful reputation of our so-called " yellow press," 
which is often boisterously impudent, and sometimes 
inclined to indulge in comments and revelations of 
the private affairs of individuals which can only be 

148 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 

dubbed coarse and cowardly, there is seldom a 
descent to the indescribably indecent caricatures 
which one finds every week in the illustrated papers 
in Germany. x\s we have noted elsewhere, just as 
the citizens of Berlin, as one sees them in the streets 
and in public places, give one the impression that 
they are not house-trained, so many of the pens and 
pencils which serve the German press, leave one 
with the feeling that their possessors would not 
know how to behave in a cultivated and well-regu- 
lated household. 

Every gentleman in Germany must have been 
ashamed of the writing in the German press after 
the sinking of the Titanic. There was a blaze of 
brutal pharisaism that put a bar-sinister across any 
claim to gentlemanliness on the part of the ma- 
jority. When every brave man in the world was 
lamenting the death of Scott, the English Arctic 
explorer, one German paper intimated that he had 
committed suicide to avoid the bankruptcy forced 
upon him by England's lack of generosity toward 
his expedition. It is almost unbelievable that such 
a cur should have escaped unthrashed, even among 
the German journalists. These two examples of 
lack of fine feeling mark them for what they are. 
Among gentlemen no comment is necessary. The 
mark of breeding is more often discovered in what 
one does not say, does not write, does not do, than 
in positive action. There was much, at that time, 
when fifteen hundred people had been buried in icy 
water, and scores of American and English gentle- 
men had gone down to death, just in answer to: 

149 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

" Ladies first, gentlemen ! " that should have been 
left unsaid and unwritten. The quality of the Ger- 
man journalist, with half a dozen exceptions, was 
betrayed to the full in those few days, and many 
a German cheek mantled with shame. 

However, a man may eat with his knife and still 
be an authority on bridge-building ; he may tuck his 
napkin under his chin preparatory to, and as an ar- 
mor against, the well-known vagaries of liquids, be- 
fore he takes his soup or his soft-boiled eggs, and 
still be an authority on soaj>making ; he may wear a 
knitted waistcoat with a frock-coat to luncheon, and 
be deeply versed in Russian history. He may have 
no inkling of the traditions of fair play, or of the 
reticences of courtesy, no shred of knightliness, and 
yet be a scholar in his way. Indeed, in none of the 
other cultured countries does one find so many men 
of trained minds, but with such untrained manners 
and morals. In their lack of sensation-mongering, 
in their indifference to social gossip, in their trust- 
worthy and learned comments upon things scientific, 
musical, theatrical, literary, and historical, they are 
as men to school-boys compared to the American 
press. They have the utter contempt for mere 
smartness that only comes with severe educational 
training. They have the scholar's impatience with 
trivialities. They skate, not to cut their names on 
the ice, but to get somewhere, and the whole indus- 
trial and scientific world knows how quickly they 
have arrived. 

Our newspapers make .a business of training their 
readers in that worst of all habits, mental dissipa- 

150 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 

tion. The German press is not thus guilty. Despite 
all I have written, I am quite sure that if I were 
banished from the active world and could see only 
half a dozen journals on my lonely island, one of 
them would be a German newspaper. It may be 
that I have a perverted literary taste, for I can get 
more humor, more keen enjoyment, out of a census 
report or an etymological dictionary than from a 
novel. My favorite literary dissipation is to read 
the works of that distinguished statistician at Wash- 
ington, Mr. O. P. Austin, the poet-laureate of in- 
dustrial America, or the toilsome and exciting verbal 
journeys of the Rev. Mr. Skeat. The classic hu- 
morists do not compare with them, in my humble 
opinion, as sources of fantastic surprises. This, per- 
haps, accounts for my sincere admiration for that 
quality of scholarship, learning, and accuracy in the 
German press. Nor does the possession of these 
qualities in the least controvert the impression given 
by the German press of political powerlessness, of 
social ignorance and incompetence, and of boorish 
ignorance of the laws of common decency in inter- 
national comment and controversy. A great scholar 
may be a booby in a drawing-room, and a lamenta- 
ble failure as an adviser in matters political and so- 
cial. "As a bird that wandereth from her nest, so is 
a man that wandereth from his place. ,, Germany 
has put some astonishing failures to her credit 
through her belief that learning can take the place 
of common-sense, and scholarship do the tasks of 
that intelligent and experienced observation to 
which the abused word, worldliness, is given. Per- 

151 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

haps it is as well that the German press declines to 
keep a social diary; well, too, that it has no candi- 
dates for the office of society Haruspex, whose 
ghoulish business it is to find omens and prophecies 
in the entrails of his victims. In that respect, at any 
rate, both society and the press in Germany are as is 
the salon to the scullery, compared with ours. As 
for that little knot of illustrated weekly papers in 
England, with their nauseating letterpress for snobs 
inside, and their advertisements of patent complex- 
ion remedies and corsets outside, there is nothing 
like them in Germany or anywhere else, so far as I 
know. You may advertise your shooting-party, 
your dance, or your dinner-party, and thus keep your- 
self before the world as though you were a whiskey, 
a soap, or a superfluous-hair-destroyer, if you please, 
and, alas, many there are who do so. At least Ger- 
many knows nothing of this weekly auction of pri- 
vacy, this nauseating snobbery which is a fungus- 
growth seen at its strongest in British soil. 

I am bound, both by tradition and experience as 
an American, to discover the reason for such con- 
ditions in the lack of fluidity in social and political 
life in Germany. The industrials, the military, the 
nobility, the civil servants, and to some extent the 
Jews, are all in separate social compartments; and 
the political parties as well keep much to themselves 
and without the personal give and take outside of 
their purely official life which obtains in America and 
in England. 

It is an impossible suggestion, I know, but if 
the upper and lower houses of the empire, or of 

152 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 

Prussia, could meet in a match at base-ball, or golf, 
or cricket; if the army could play the civil ser- 
vice; if the newspaper correspondents could play the 
under-secretaries ; if they could all be induced oc- 
casionally, to throw off their mental and moral 
uniforms, and to meet merely as men, a current 
of fresh air would blow through Germany, that 
she would never after permit to be shut out. 
Personal dignity is refreshed, not lost, by a 
romp. Who has not seen distinguished Americans 
and distinguished Englishmen, in their own or in 
their friends' houses, or at one or another of our 
innumerable games, behaving like boys out of 
school, crawling about beneath improvised skins and 
growling and roaring in charades ; indulging in fly- 
ing chaff of one another; in the skirts of their wives 
and sisters playing cricket, or base-ball, or tennis 
with the one hand only; caricaturing good-humor- 
edly some of their own official business, or arrang- 
ing a match of some kind where their own servants 
join in to make up a side; or, and well I remember 
it, half a dozen youths of about fifty playing cricket 
with one stump and a broom-handle for an hour 
one hot afternoon, amid tumbles and shouts of 
laughter, and a shower of impromptu nicknames, 
and one or two of them bore names known all over 
the English-speaking world. Nobody loses any dig- 
nity, any importance ; but there is an unconquerable 
stiffness in Germany that makes me laugh almost as 
I make this suggestion. We have only a certain 
reserve of serious work in us. To attempt to be 
serious all the time is never to be at rest. This 

153 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

worried busyness, which is a characteristic of the 
more mediocre of my own countrymen also, is really 
a symptom of deficient vitality. Things are in the 
saddle and you are the mule and not the man, if you 
are such an one. The stiffness and self -conscious- 
ness of the Germans is really a sign of their lack 
of confidence in themselves. Youth is always more 
serious than middle age, for the same reason. A 
man who is at home in the world laughs and is 
gay; he who is shy and doubtful scowls. It is the 
God-fearing who are not afraid, it is the man-fear- 
ing who are awkward and uncomfortable. 

The first thing to be afraid of is oneself, but after 
oneself is conquered why be afraid to let him loose! 

It would be quite untrue to give the impression 
that there is no fun, no larking, no chaff, in Ger- 
many, although I am bound to say that there is 
little of this last. I can bear witness to a healthy 
love of fun, and to an exuberant exploitation of 
youthful vitality in many directions among the 
students and younger officers, for example. Better 
companions for a romp exist nowhere. Having 
been blessed with an undue surplus of vitality, 
which for many years kept me fully occupied in di- 
recting its expenditure, alas, not always with suc- 
cess, I can only add that I found as many youthful 
companions in a similar predicament in Germany, as 
anywhere else. 

But with the Englishman and the American, both 
temperament and environment permit youthfulness 
to last longer. The German must soon get into the 
mill and grind and be ground, and he is by tempera- 

154 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 

ment more easily caught and put into the uniform 
of a constantly correct behavior. As for us, we are 
all boys still at thirty, many of us at fifty, and some 
of us die ere the school-boy exuberance has all been 
squeezed or dried out of us. Not so in Germany. 
One sees more men in Germany who give the impres- 
sion that they could not by any possibility ever have 
been boys than with us. They begin to look cramped 
at thirty, and they are stiff at fifty, as though they 
had been fed on a diet of circumspection, caution, 
and obedience. They are drilled early and they soon 
become amenable, and then even indulgent, toward 
the drill-master. 

This German people have not developed into a 
nation, they have been squeezed into the mould of 
a nation. The nation is not for the people, the 
people are for the nation. " By the word Constitu- 
tion/' writes Lord Bolingbroke, " we mean, when- 
ever we speak with propriety and exactness, the 
assemblage of laws, institutions, and customs de- 
rived from certain fixed principles of reason, di- 
rected to certain fixed objects of public good, that 
compose the general system by which the commu- 
nity hath agreed to be governed." The Germans 
have no such constitution, for the community was 
scarcely consulted, much less hath it agreed to the 
general system by which it is governed. 

Of course, in every nation its affairs are, and 
must be, conducted by officials. That is as true 
of America as of Germany. The fundamental dif- 
ference is that with us these official persons are 
executive officers only, the real captain is the people ; 

155 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

while in Germany these official persons are the real 
governors of the people, subject to the commands 
of one who repeatedly and publicly asserts that his 
commission is from God and not from the people. 
This puts whole classes of the community perma- 
nently into uniform, and the wearers of these uni- 
forms are almost afraid to laugh, and would con- 
sider it sacrilege to romp. 

Caution is a very puny form of morality. " He 
that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that 
regardeth the clouds shall not reap." It is as true 
politically as of other spheres of life that " he or 
she who lets the world or his own portion of it 
choose his plan of life for him has no need of any 
other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation/' 
Thus writes John Stuart Mill, and what else can be 
said of the political activities of the Germans? 
What journalist or what patriot indeed can take 
seriously a majority that has no power? What 
people can call itself free to whom its rulers are not 
responsible ? The Social Democrats, at the moment 
of writing, have won one hundred and ten seats in 
the Reichstag, but the army and navy estimates are 
beyond their reach, the taxes are fixtures, a con- 
stitution is a dream, and if they are cantankerous or 
truculent the Reichstag will be dismissed by a wave 
of the hand. Say what one will, they are a mam- 
millary people politically, and the strongest party 
in the Reichstag is merely an energetic political 
mangonel. Their leaders moult opinions, they do 
not mould them, and could not translate them into 
action if they did. 

156 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 

Not since 1874 has there been a Reichstag so 
strongly radical, but nothing will come of it. The 
Reichskanzler, Doctor von Bethmann-Hollweg, did 
not hesitate to take an early opportunity, after the 
opening of the new Reichstag, to state boldly that 
the issue was Authority versus Democratization, and 
that he had no fear of the result. It is customary 
for the newly elected Praesidium, the president and 
two vice-presidents of the Reichstag, to be received 
in audience by the Emperor. On this occasion the 
Socialists forbade their representative to go, and 
the Emperor, therefore, refused to receive any of 
them. As usual, they played into his hands. Hans 
bleibt immer Hans, and on this occasion his vulgar 
lack of good manners only brought contumely upon 
the whole Reichstag, and left the Emperor as the 
outstanding dignified figure in the controversy. 
Such behavior is not calculated to invite confidence, 
and not likely to induce this enemy-surrounded na- 
tion to put its destinies in such hands, not at any rate 
for some time to come. " Though thou shouldest 
bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, 
yet will not his foolishness depart from him. ,, 

Intellectually Germany is a republic, and we 
Americans perhaps beyond all other peoples have 
profited by her literature, her philosophy, her music, 
her scientific and economic teaching. We have 
kneaded these things into our political as well as 
into our intellectual life. " Intellectual emancipa- 
tion, if it does not give us at the same time control 
over ourselves, is poisonous. " And who writes thus ? 
Goethe! But the intellectual freedom of Germany 

157 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

has done next to nothing to bring about political 
or, in the realm of journalism, personal self-control. 

It is a strange state of affairs. Intelligent men 
and women in Germany do not realize it. Not 
once, but many times, I have been told : " You 
foreigners are forever commenting upon our bureau- 
cracy, our officialdom, but it is not as all-powerful 
as you think. We have plenty of freedom ! " These 
people are often themselves officials, nearly always 
related to, or of the society, of the ruling class. 
The rulers and the ruling class have naturally no 
sense of oppression, no feeling that they are un- 
duly subject to others, since the others are them- 
selves. I am quite willing to believe of my own and 
of other people's personal opinions that they are 
not dogmas merely because they are baptized in 
intolerance. I must leave it to the reader to judge 
from the facts, whether or no the Germans have a 
political autonomy, which permits the exercise and 
development of political power. A glance at the 
political parties themselves will make this perhaps 
the more clear. 

The official organization of the conservative 
party, may be said to date back to the founding of 
the Neue Preussische Zeitung in 1848, and the 
organization of the party in many parts of Germany. 
Earlier still, Burke was the hero of the pioneers of 
this party, whose first newspaper had for editor, 
no less a person than Heinrich von Kleist, and 
whose first endeavors were to support God and the 
King, and to throw off the yoke of foreign domina- 
tion. 

158 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 

In 1876 was formed the Deutsch-Konservativ 
party supporting Bismarck. " Konigthum von 
Gottes Gnaden " is still their watchword, with op- 
position to Social Democracy, support of imperial- 
ism, agrarian and industrial protection, and Chris- 
tian teaching in the schools, as the planks of their 
platform. They also combat Jewish influence 
everywhere, particularly in the schools. Allied to 
this party is the Bund der Landwirte and the 
Deutscher Bauernbitnd. In the election of 1912 
they elected forty-five representatives to the Reichs- 
tag, a serious falling off from the sixty-three seats 
held previous to that election. The Free Conserva- 
tive portion of the Conservative party, is composed 
of the less autocratic members of the landed nobility, 
but there is little difference in their point of view. 

The Centrum, or Catholic party, is in theory not 
a religious party; in practice it is, though it does 
not bar out Protestant members who hold similar 
views to their own. Its political activity began in 
1870, and the first call for the formation of the 
party came from Reichensperger in the Kolnischer 
Volkszeitung. The famous leader of the party, 
and a politician who even held his own against 
Bismarck, was the Hanoverian Justizminister, Doc- 
tor Ludwig Windthorst. The stormy time of the 
party was from 1873 to x 878, when Bismarck 
attempted to oppose the growing power of the 
Catholic Church, and more particularly of the 
Jesuits. The so-called May laws of that year for- 
bade Roman Catholic intervention in civil affairs; 
obliged all ministers of religion to pass the higher- 

159 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

schools examinations and to study theology three 
years at a university; made all seminaries subject 
to state inspection; and gave fuller protection to 
those of other creeds. In 1878 Bismarck needed the 
support of the Centrum party to carry through the 
new tariff, and the May laws, except that regarding 
civil marriage, were repealed. The party stands 
for religious teaching in the primary schools, Chris- 
tian marriage, federal character of empire, protec- 
tion, and independence of the state. More than any 
other party it has kept its representation in the 
Reichstag at about the same number. In 1903 
they cast 1,875,300 votes and had 100 members. 
In 1907 they had 103 members, and in the last 
election of 19 12 they won 93 seats. Even this 
Catholic party is now divided. Count Oppersdorff 
leads the " Only-Catholic " party, against the more 
liberal section which has its head-quarters at 
Cologne, where the late Cardinal Fischer was the 
leader. At the session of the Reichstag in 191 3, 
when the question of the readmission of the Jes- 
uits was raised, the Centrum party even sided with 
the Socialists in the matter of the expropriation law 
for Posen, in order to annoy the chancellor for his 
opposition to themselves. Such political miscege- 
nation as this does not show a high level of faith or of 
policy. 

It may be of interest to the reader to know that 
in 1903 the population of Germany was 58,629,000, 
and the number qualified to vote 12,531,000; in 1907 
the population was 61,983,000, and the number 
qualified to vote, 13,353,000; in 19 12 the popula- 

160 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 

tion was 65,407,000, and the qualified voters num- 
bered over 14,000,000, of whom 12,124,503 voted. 
In 1903 there were 9,496,000 votes cast; in 1907, 
11,304,000. The German Reichstag has 397 mem- 
bers, or 1 representative to every 156,000 inhabi- 
tants; the United States House of Representatives 
has 433 members, or 1 for every 212,000 inhabi- 
tants; England, 670 members, or 1 for every 62,- 
000 ; France, 584, or 1 for every 67,000 ; Italy, 508, 
or 1 for every 64,000; Austria, 516, or 1 for every 
51,000. 

1 Despite the fact that the Conservative and the 
Catholic parties have much in common, and are the 
parties of the Right and Centre: these names are 
given the political parties in the Reichstag accord- 
ing to their grouping on the right, centre, and left 
of the house, looking from the tribune or speaker's 
platform, from which all set speeches are delivered, 
they are often at odds among themselves, and Bis- 
marck and Bulow brought about tactical differences 
among them for their own purposes. Their pro- 
gramme may be summed up as " As you were," 
which is not inspiring either as an incentive or as 
a command. 

The Liberal parties are the National liberale; 
Fortschrittspartei, or Progressives; and the Frei- 
sinnige Volkspartei, or Liberal Democratic party. 

The National Liberal party was strongest during 
the days when Prussia's efforts were directed mainly 
toward a federation and a strengthening of the 
bonds which hold the states together ; " unter dem 
Donner der Kanonen von Koniggratz ist der na- 

161 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

tionalliberale Gedanke geboren." Loyalty to em- 
peror and empire, country above party, a fleet com* 
petent to protect the country and its overseas in- 
terests, are watchwords of the party. The party 
is protectionist, and in matters of school and church 
administration in accord with the Free Conserva- 
tives. 

The Liberal Democratic party demands electoral 
reform, no duties on foodstuffs, and imperial in- 
surance laws for the workingmen. 

The Fortschrittspartei finds its intellectual be- 
ginnings, in the condensing of the hazy clouds of 
revolution in 1848, in the persons of Wilhelm von 
Humboldt and Freiherr von Stein. Politically, the 
party came into being in 1861, and Waldeck, von 
Hoverbeck, and Virchow are familiar names to 
students of German political history; later Eugen 
Richter was the leader of the party in the Reichstag. 
This party is still for free-trade, in opposition to 
military and bureaucratic government, favorable to 
parliamentary government. Of the grouping and 
regrouping of these parties; of their divisions for 
and against Bismarck's policies ; of their splits on the 
questions of free-trade and protection; of their 
leanings now to the right, now to the left; of their 
differences over details of taxation for purposes 
of defence; of their attitudes toward a powerful 
fleet, and toward the Jesuits, it would require a 
volume, and a large one, to describe. Though it is 
dangerous to characterize them, they may be said 
without inaccuracy to represent the democratic 
movement in Germany both in thought and political 

162 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 

action, and to hold a wavering place between the 
Conservatives and the Social Democrats. 

The Social Democratic party, the party of the 
wage-earners, only assumed recognizable outlines 
after the appeal of Ferdinand Lassalle for a work- 
ingman's congress at Leipsic in 1863. ^ n T ^77 they 
mustered 493,000 voters. Bismarck and the mon- 
archy looked askance at their growing power. It 
was attempted to pass a law, punishing with fine 
and imprisonment : " wer in einer den offentlichen 
Frieden gefahrdenden Weise verschiedene Klassen 
der Bevolkerung gegeneinander offentlich aufreizt 
oder wer in gleicher Weise die Institute der Ehe, 
der Familie und des Eigentums offentlich durch 
Rede oder Schrift angreift." This was a direct at- 
tack upon the Socialists, but the Reichstag refused 
to pass the law. In May, 1878, and shortly af- 
ter in June, two attempts were made upon the 
life of the Kaiser. Bismarck then easily and 
quickly forced through the new law against the 
Socialists. 

Under this law newspapers were suppressed, or- 
ganizations dissolved, meetings forbidden, and cer- 
tain leaders banished. For twelve years the party 
was kept under the watchful restraint of the police, 
and their propaganda made difficult and in many 
places impossible. After the repeal of this law, and 
for the last twenty years, the party has increased 
with surprising rapidity. In 1893 the Social Dem- 
ocrats cast 1^87,000 votes; in 1898, 2,107,000; in 
1903, more than 3,000,000; and in the last election, 
1912, 4,238,919; and they have just returned no 

163 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

delegates to the Reichstag out of a total of 397 
members. 

It is noteworthy that in America there is one 
Socialist member of the House of Representatives ; 
while in Germany, which combines autocratic meth- 
ods of government, with something more nearly 
approaching state ownership and control, than any 
other country in the world, the most numerous 
party in the present Reichstag is that of the Social 
Democrats. 

Freedom is the only medicine for discontent. 
There is no rope for the hanging of a demagogue 
like free speech; no such disastrous gift for the so- 
cialist as freedom of action. Imagine what would 
have happened in America if we had attempted to 
suppress Bryan! The result of giving him free play 
and a fair hearing, the result of allowing the people 
to judge for themselves, has been a prolonged spec- 
tacle of political hari-kiri which has had a wholesome 
though negative educational influence. The most 
accomplished oratorical Pierrot of our day, who 
changes his political philosophy as easily as he 
changes his costume, has seen one hundred and sixty 
cities and towns in America turn to government by 
commission, and has kept the heraldic donkey al- 
ways just out of reach of the political carrots, until 
the Republican party itself fairly pushed the donkey 
into the carrot-field, but even then with another 
leader. No autocrat could have done so much. 

As early as 1887 Auer, Bebel, and Liebknecht out- 
lined the programme of the party, and this pro- 
gramme, again revised at Erfurt in 1891, stands 

164 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 

as the expression of their demands. They claim 
that : " Die Arbeiterklasse kann ihre okonomischen 
Kampfe nicht fiihren und ihre okonomische Organ- 
isation nicht entwickeln ohne politische Rechte." 
Roughly they demand : the right to form unions and 
to hold public meetings; separation of church and 
state ; education free and secular, and the feeding 
of school-children; state expenditure to be met ex- 
clusively by taxes on incomes, property, and inheri- 
tance; people to decide on peace and war; direct 
system of voting, one adult one vote; citizen army 
for defence; referendum; international court of 
arbitration. Their leader in the Reichstag to-day is 
Bebel, and from what I have heard of the debates 
in that assembly I should judge that they have not 
only a majority over any other party in numbers, but 
also in speaking ability. The members of the So- 
cialist party always leave the house in a body, at the 
end of each session, just before the cheers are called 
for, for the Emperor. They have become more and 
more daring of late in their outspoken criticism 
of both the Emperor and his ministers. In conse- 
quence, they are replied to with ever-increasing dis- 
like and bitterness by their opponents. At a re- 
cent banquet of old university students in Berlin, 
Freiherr von Zedlitz, presiding, quoted Barth and 
Richter : " The victory of Social Democracy means 
the destruction of German civilization, and a Social 
Democratic state would be nothing more than a 
gigantic house of correction. ,, 

In addition to the four important political di- 
visions in the Reichstag, the Conservative, Liberal, 

165 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 



Clerical, and Socialist, there are many subdivisions 
of these. Since 1871 there have been some forty- 
different parties represented, eleven conservative, 
fourteen liberal, two clerical, nine national-partic- 
ularist, and five socialist. To-day, besides four 
small groups and certain representatives acknowl- 
edging no party, there are some eleven different 
factions. 



Right, or Con- 
servative . . . 

Liberal 

Clerical ....'.. 

Social Demo- 
crats , 



1871 



895,000 

1,884,000 

973,ooo 

124,000 



1881 



1,210,000 
1,948,000 
1,618,000 

312,000 



1893 



1,806,000 

2,102,000 
1,920,000 

1,787,000 



1907 1912 



2,141,000 
3,078,000 
2,779,000 

3,259,000 



1,149,916 
3,227,846 
2,012,990 

4A38,9ig 



So far as one may so divide them, the voters 
have aligned themselves as follows: In the last 
elections, in 19 12, the Conservatives and their allies 
elected 75 members; the Clericals, 93; the Poles, 18; 
and the Guelphs, 5 ; and these come roughly under 
the heading of the party of the Right. Under the 
heading Left, the National Liberals and Progres- 
sive party elected 88, and the Social Democrats no 
members to the Reichstag. The parties stand there- 
fore roughly divided at the moment of writing as 
191 Conservative, and 200 Radical, with 6 mem- 
bers unaccounted for. The Poles with 18 seats, the 
Alsatians with 5, the Guelphs and Lorrainers and 
Danes with 8 seats, and the no-party with 2 seats, 
are also represented, but are here placed with the 

166 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 

party of the Right. To divide the parties into two 
camps gives the result that, roughly, four and a 
half millions voted that they were satisfied, and 
seven and a half millions that they were not. 

No doubt any chancellor, including Doctor von 
Bethmann-Hollweg, would be glad to divide the 
Reichstag as definitely and easily as I have done. 
Theoretically these divisions may be useful to the 
reader, but practically to the leader they are useless. 
Bebel, the leader of the Social Democrats, declares 
himself ready to shoulder a musket to defend the 
country; Heydebrandt, the leader of the Conser- 
vatives, and possibly the most effective speaker in 
the Reichstag, has spoken warmly in favor of social 
reform laws; the Clericals are for peace, almost at 
any price ; the Agrarians or Junkers for a tariff on 
foodstuffs and cattle, and one might continue an- 
alyzing the parties until one would be left bewildered 
at their refining of the political issues at stake, 
Back to God and the Emperor; and forward to a 
constitutional monarchy with the chancellor respon- 
sible to the Reichstag, and perhaps later a republic, 
represent the two extremes. Between the two every- 
thing and anything. It is hard to put together a 
team out of these diverse elements that a chancellor 
can drive with safety, and with the confidence that 
he will finally arrive with his load at his destination. 
In addition to these parties there are the frankly 
disaffected representatives of conquered Poland, of 
conquered Holstein, of conquered Alsace-Lorraine, 
and of conquered Hanover, this last known as the 
Guelph party; all of them anti-Prussian. 

167 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

It is not to be wondered at that the comments, 
deductions, and prophecies of foreigners are wildly' 
astray when dealing with German politics. In 
America, religious differences and racial differences 
play a small role at Washington ; but the 220 Protes- 
tants, the 141 Catholics, the 3 Jews, the 5 free- 
thinkers, and so on, in the last Reichstag are in a 
way parties as well. In that same assembly 2 mem- 
bers were over 80, 78 over 60, 271 between 40 and 
60, 42 under 40, and 3 under 30 years of age. One 
hundred and six members were landed proprietors; 
220 were of the liberal professions, including 37 
authors, 35 judges or magistrates, 21 clericals, 7 
doctors, and 1 artist; 13 merchants; 21 manufac- 
turers; and 20 shopkeepers and laborers. Seventy- 
two members were of the nobility, a decided falling 
off from 1878, when they numbered 162. Two hun- 
dred and fifty members were educated at a univer- 
sity, and practically all may be said to have had an 
education equal if not superior to that given in our 
smaller colleges. 

In the American Congress, in the House of Rep- 
resentatives, we have 212 lawyers, though there are 
only 135,000 lawyers in our population of 90,000,- 
000. We have in that same assembly 50 business 
men, representing the 15,000,000 of our people en- 
gaged in trade and industry. Perhaps the German 
Reichstag is as fairly representative as our own 
House of Representatives, though both assemblies 
show the babyhood of civilization which still votes 
for flashing eyes, thumping fists, hollering patriot- 
ism, and smooth phrases. The surprising feature 

168 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 

of elective assemblies is that here and there Messrs. 
Self-Control, Ability, Dignity, and Independence 
find seats at all. The members are paid, since 1906, 
a salary of 3,000 marks, with a deduction of 20 
marks for each day's absence. They have free 
passes over German railways during the session. 
The Reichstag is elected every five years. 

The appearance of the Reichstag to the stranger 
is notable for the presence of military, naval, and 
clerical uniforms. It is, as one looks down upon 
them, an assembly where at least one-fourth are 
bald or thin-haired, and together they give the im- 
pression of being big in the waist, careless in cos- 
tume, slovenly in carriage, and lacking proper feed- 
ing, grooming, and exercise. It is clearly an as- 
semblage, not of men of action, but of men of 
theories. Not only their appearance betrays this, 
but their debates as well, and what one knows of 
their individual training and preferences goes to 
substantiate this judgment of them. There are no 
soldiers, sailors, explorers, governors of alien peo- 
ple; no men, in short, who have solved practical 
problems dealing with men, but only theorists. 
Such men as Gotzen, Solf, and others, who have 
had actual experience of dealing with men, are rare 
exceptions. Probably the best men in Germany 
wish, and wish heartily, that there were more such 
men ; indeed, I betray no secret when I declare that 
the most intelligent and patriotic criticism in Ger- 
many coincides with my own. 

The electoral divisions of Germany, as we have 
noted elsewhere, have not been changed for forty 

169 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

years, with a consequent disproportionate represen- 
tation from the rural, as over against the enor- 
mously increased population, of the urban and in- 
dustrial districts. The Conservatives, for example, 
in 1907 gained 1 seat for every 18,232 votes; the 
Clericals or Centrum, 1 seat for every 20,626 votes ; 
the National Liberals, 1 for eve-ry 30,635 votes; 
and the Social Democrats, 1 for every 75,781 votes. 
It may be seen from this, how overwhelming must 
be the majority of votes cast by the Social Demo- 
crats, in order to gain a majority representation in 
the Reichstag itself. In 19 12 they cast more than 
one-third of the votes, and are represented by no 
members out of the total of 397. 

For the student of German politics it is important 
to remember, that the Social Democrats are not all 
representatives of socialism or of democracy. Their 
demands at this present time are far from the radi- 
cal theory that all sources of production should be 
in the hands of the people. Only a small number 
of very red radicals demand that. Their successes 
have been, and they are real successes, along the lines 
of greater protection and more political liberty for 
the workingman. The number of their votes is 
swelled by thousands of voters who express their 
general discontent in that way. The state in Ger- 
many owns railroads, telegraph and telephone lines ; 
operates mines and certain industries, and both con- 
trols and directly helps certain large manufactories 
which are either of benefit to the state, or which, if 
they were entirely independent, might prove a 
danger to the state. The state enforces insurance 

170 



GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 

against sickness, accident, and old age, and the three 
million office-holders are dependent upon the state 
for their livelihood and their pensions. 

It is a striking thing in Germany to see human 
nature cropping out, even under these ideal condi- 
tions ; for it is difficult to see how the state could be 
more grandmotherly in her officious care of her own. 
But this is not enough. Physical safety is not 
enough, the demand is for political freedom, and for 
a government answerable to the people and the peo- 
ple's representatives. Rich men, powerful men, rep- 
resentative men by the thousands, men whom one 
meets of all sorts and conditions, and who are neither 
radical nor socialistic, vote the Social Democrat 
ticket. The Social Democrats are by no means all 
democrats nor all socialists. As a body of voters 
they are united only in the expression of their dis- 
content with a government of officials, practically 
chosen and kept in power over their heads, and with 
whose tenure of office they have nothing to do. 

The fact that the members of the Reichstag are 
not in the saddle, but are used unwillingly and often 
contemptuously as a necessary and often stubborn 
and unruly pack-animal by the Kaiser-appointed 
ministers; the fact that they are pricked forward, 
or induced to move by a tempting feed held just 
beyond the nose, has something to do, no doubt, 
with the lack of unanimity which exists. The di- 
verse elements debate with one another, and waste 
their energy in rebukes and recriminations which 
lead nowhere and result in nothing. I have listened 
to many debates in the Reichstag where the one 

171 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

aim of the speeches seemed to be merely to un- 
burden the soul of the speaker. He had no plan, 
no proposal, no solution, merely a confession to 
make. After forty-odd years the Germans, in many 
ways the most cultivated nation in the world, are 
still without real representative government. 

Why should the press or society take this as- 
sembly very seriously, when, as the most important 
measure of which they are capable, they can vote 
to have themselves dismissed by declining to pass 
supply bills; and when, as has happened four times 
in their history, they return chastened, tamed, and 
amenable to the wishes of their master? 

No wonder the political writing in the press seems 
to us vaporish and without definite aims. It is per- 
haps due to this weakness that the writing in the 
German journals upon other subjects is very good 
indeed. The best energies of the writers are de- 
voted to what may be called educational and literary 
expositions. In the field of foreign politics the 
German press is less well-informed, less instructive, 
and consequently irritating. The poverty of ma- 
terial resources makes such writing as that of Sir 
Valentine Chirrol, and in former days that of Mr. 
G. W. Smalley, beyond the reach of the German 
journalist, and their press is painfully narrow, fre- 
quently unfair, and often purposely insulting to for- 
eign countries. They are not only anti-English, but 
anti-French, anti- American, and at times bitter. If 
the American people read the German newspapers 
there would be little love lost between us. 



172 



V 

BERLIN 

HE is a fortunate traveller who enters Ber- 
lin from the west, and toward the end of his 
journey rolls along over the twelve or fif- 
teen miles of new streets, glides under the Bran- 
denburger Tor, and finds himself in Unter den 
Linden. The Kaiserdamm, Bismarck Strasse, Ber- 
liner Strasse, Charlottenburgerchaussee, Unter den 
Linden, give the most splendid street entrance into a 
city in the world. The pavement is without a hole, 
without a crack, and as clear of rubbish of any kind 
as a well-kept kitchen floor. The cleanliness is so 
noticeable that one looks searchingly for even a 
scrap of paper, for some trace of negligence, to 
modify this superiority over the streets of our 
American cities. But there is no consolation; the 
superiority is so incontestable that no comparison is 
possible. For the whole twelve or fifteen miles the 
streets are lined with trees, or shrubs, or flowers, 
with well-kept grass, and with separate roads on 
each side for horsemen or foot-passengers. In the 
spring and summer the streets are a veritable garden. 
Broadway is 80 feet wide; Fifth Avenue is 100 
feet wide; the Champs Elysees is 233 feet wide; 

173 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

and Unter den Linden is 196 feet wide, and has 70 
feet of roadway. 

For every square yard of wood pavement in 
Berlin there are 24 square yards of asphalt and 
37 square yards of stone. The total length of 
streets cleaned in Berlin, which has an area of 25 
square miles, according to a report of some few years 
ago, was 316 miles; there are 700 streets and some 
70 open places, and the area cleaned daily was 
8,160,000 square yards. The cost of the care of the 
Berlin streets has risen with the growth of the city 
from 1,670,847 marks, 1 in 1880, to 6,068,557 
marks, in 19 10. The total cost of the street-clean- 
ing in New York, in 1907, was $9,758,922, and in 
Manhattan, The Bronx, and Brooklyn 5,129 men 
were employed; while the working force in Berlin, 
in 191 1, was 2,150. It should be said also that in 
New York an enormous amount of scavenging is 
paid for privately besides. In New York the street- 
sweepers are paid $2.19 a day; in Berlin the foremen 
receive 4.75 marks the first three years, and there- 
after 5 marks; the men 3.75 marks the first three 
years, then 4 marks, and after nine years' service 
4.50 marks. The boy assistants receive 2 marks, 
after two years 2.25 marks, and after four years' 
service 3 marks. The whole force is paid every 
fourteen days. The street-cleaning department is 
divided into thirty-three districts, these districts into 
four groups, each with an inspector, and all under 
a head-inspector. Attached to each district are 
depots with yards for storage of vehicles, appa- 

1 The mark is equal to a little less than twenty-five cents. 

174 



BERLIN 

ratus, brooms, shovels, uniforms, with machine 
shops, where on more than one occasion I have seen 
enthusiastic workmen trying experiments with new 
machinery to facilitate their work. 

Over this whole force presides, a politician ? Far 
from it; a technically educated man of wide ex- 
perience, and, of the official of my visit I may add, 
of great courtesy and singular enthusiasm both for 
his task and for the men under him. What his 
politics are concerns nobody, what the politics of 
the party in power are concerns him not at all. 
That an individual, or a group of individuals, power- 
ful financially or politically, should influence him in 
his choice or in his placing of the men under him 
is unthinkable. That a political boss in this or in 
that district, should dictate who should and who 
should not, be employed in the street-cleaning de- 
partment, even down to the meanest remover of 
dung with a dust-pan, as was done for years in New 
York and every other city in America, would be 
looked upon here as a farce of Topsy-Turvydom, 
with Alice in Wonderland in the title-role. 

The streets are cleaned for the benefit of the 
people, and not for the benefit of the pockets of 
a political aristocracy. The public service is a 
guardian, not a predatory organization. In our 
country when a man can do nothing else he be- 
comes a public servant; in Germany he can only 
become a public servant after severe examinations 
and ample proofs of fitness. The superiority of one 
service over the other is moral, not merely me- 
chanical. 

175 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

The street-cleaning department is recruited from 
soldiers who have served their time, not over thirty- 
five years of age, and who must pass a doctor's 
examination, and be passed also by the police. The 
rules as to their conduct, their uniforms, their rights, 
and their duties, down to such minute carefulness 
as that they may not smoke on duty " except when 
engaged in peculiarly dirty and offensive labor," are 
here, as in all official matters in Germany, outlined 
in labyrinthine detail. Sickness, death, accident, are 
all provided for with a pension, and there are also 
certain gifts of money for long service. The police 
and the street-cleaning department co-operate to 
enforce the law, where private companies or the 
city-owned street-railways are negligent in making 
repairs, or in replacing pavement that has been dis- 
turbed or destroyed. There is no escape. If the 
work is not done promptly and satisfactorily, it is 
done by the city, charged against the delinquent, 
and collected! 

One need go into no further details as to why 
and wherefore Berlin, Hamburg, even Cologne in 
these days, Leipsic, Diisseldorf, Dresden, Munich, 
keep their streets in such fashion, that they are as 
corridors to the outside of Irish hovels, as compared 
to the city streets of America; for the definite and 
all-including answer and explanation are contained 
in the two words : no politics. 

Berlin is governed by a town council, under a 
chief burgomaster and a burgomaster, and the civic 
magistracy, and the police, these last, however, 
under state control. The chief burgomaster and the 

176 



BERLIN 

burgomaster are chosen from trained and expe- 
rienced candidates, and are always men of wide 
experience and severe technical training, who have 
won a reputation in other towns as successful 
municipal administrators. 

In May, 19 12, Wermuth, the son of the blind 
King of Hanover's right-hand man, and he him- 
self the recently resigned imperial secretary of the 
treasury, was elected Oberburgomaster of Berlin. 
Such is the standing of the men named to govern 
the German cities. It is as though Elihu Root 
should be elected mayor of New York, with Colonel 
John Biddle as police commissioner, and Colonel 
Goethals as commissioner of street-cleaning. May 
the day come when we can avail ourselves of the 
services of such men to govern our cities ! 

The magistracy numbers 34, of whom 18 receive 
salaries. The town council consists of 144 mem- 
bers, half of whom must be householders They are 
elected for six years, and one-third of them retire 
every two years, but are eligible for re-election. 
They are elected by the three-class system of voting, 
which is described in another chapter. This three- 
class system of voting results in certain inequalities. 
In Prussia, for example, fifteen per cent, of the 
voters have two-thirds of the electoral power, and 
relatively the same may be said of Berlin. 

Unlike the municipal elections in American cities, 
the voters have only a simple ballot to put in the 
ballot-box. National and state politics play no part, 
and the voter is not confused by issues that have 
nothing to do with his city government. The govern- 

177 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

ment of their cities is arranged for on the basis that 
officials will be honest, and work for the city and 
not for themselves. Our city organizations often 
give the air of living under laws framed to prevent 
thievery, bribery, blackmailing, and surreptitious 
murder. We make our municipal laws as though 
we were in the stone age. 

These German cities are also, unlike American 
cities, autonomous. They have no state-made 
charters to interpret and to obey; they are not 
restricted as to debt or expenditure; and they are 
not in the grip of corporations that have bought 
or leased water, gas, electricity, or street-railway 
franchises, and these, represented by the wealthiest 
and most intelligent citizens, become, through the 
financial undertakings and interests of these very 
same citizens, often the worst enemies of their own 
city. The German cities are spared also the con- 
fusion, which is injected into our politics by a 
fortunately small class of reformers, with the 
prudish peculiarities of morbid vestals; men who 
cannot work with other men, and who bring the 
virile virtues, the sound charities, and wholesome 
morality into contempt. 

We all know him, the smug snob of virtue. You 
may find him a professor at the university; you may 
find him leading prayer-meetings and preaching pure 
politics ; you may find him the bloodless philanthro- 
pist; you may find him a rank atheist, with his 
patents for the bringing in of his own kingdom of 
heaven. These are the men above all others who 
make the Tammany izing of our politics possible. 

178 



BERLIN 

Honest men cannot abide the hot-house atmosphere 
of their self-conscious virtue. Nothing is more dis- 
couraging to robust virtue than the criticisms of 
teachers of ethics, who live in coddled comfort, upon 
private means, and other people's ideas. 

Germany is just now suffering from the spasms 
of moral colic, due to overeating. All luxury is in 
one form or another overeating. Berlin itself has 
grown too rapidly into the vicious ways of a me- 
tropolis, where spenders and wasters congregate. 
In 191 1 the betting-machines at the Berlin race- 
tracks took in $7,546,000, of which the state took for 
its license, 16 2-3 per cent. There were 128 days of 
racing, while in England they have 340 days' racing 
in the year! 

In 191 1, 1,300,000 strangers visited Berlin, of 
whom 1,046,162 were Germans, 97,683 Russians, 
39>555 Austrians, 30,550 Americans, and 16,600 
English. Berlin killed 2,000,000 beasts for food, 
including 10,500 horses; she takes care of 3,000 
nightly in her night-shelters, puts away $17,500,000 
in savings-banks, and has deposits therein of $90,- 
500,000. On the other hand, she has built a palace 
of vice costing $1,625,000, in which on many nights 
between 11 p. m. and 2 a. m. they sell $8,000 worth 
of champagne. No one knows his Berlin, who has 
not partaken of a " Kalte Ente," or a " Land- 
wehrtopp," a " Schlummerpunsch," or " Eine 
Weisse mit einer Strippe." There is still a boyish 
notion about dissipation, and they have their own 
great classic to quote from, who in " Faust " pours 
forth this rather raw advice for gayety : 

179 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

" Greif t nur hinein ins voile Menschenleben ! 
Ein jeder lebt's, nicht vielen ist's bekannt, 
Und wo Ihr's packt, da ist es interessant ! " 

Berlin is still in the throes of that sophomorical 
philosophy of life which believes that it is, from the 
point of view of sophistication, of age, when it is 
free to be befuddled with wine and befooled by 
women. But the German mind has no sympathy 
with hypocrisy, They may be brutal in their rather 
material views of morals, but they are frank. 
There may be mental prigs among them, but there 
are no moral prigs. In both England and America 
we suffer from a certain morbid ethical daintiness. 
There is a ripeness of moral fastidiousness that is 
often difficult to distinguish from rottenness. It is 
part of the feminism of America, born of our pros- 
perity, for not one of these fastidious moralists is 
not a rich man, and Germany escapes this difficulty. 

The government of a German city is so simple 
in its machinery that every voter can easily under- 
stand it. No doubt Seth Low and George L. Rives 
could explain to an intelligent man the charter under 
which New York City is governed, but they are 
very, very rare exceptions. 

Our city government is bad, not because de- 
mocracy is a failure, not because Americans are 
inherently dishonest, but because we are a super- 
ficially educated people, untrained to think, and, 
therefore, still worshipping the Jeffersonian fetich 
of divided responsibility between the three branches 
of the government. The judicial, the legislative, 
and the executive are, with minute care, forced to 

1 80 



BERLIN 

check and to impede one another, and we even carry 
this antiquated superstition, born of a suspicious 
and timid republicanism, into the government of our 
cities. With the exception of those cities in America 
which are governed by commissions, our cities are 
slaves as compared with the German cities. They 
are slaves of the predatory politicians, and they, on 
the other hand, are the bribed taskmasters of the 
rich corporations. The German asks in bewilder- 
ment why our men of wealth, of leisure, and of 
intelligence are not devoting themselves to the ser- 
vice of the state and the city. Alas, the answer is 
the pitiable one that the electoral machinery is so 
complicated that the voters can be and are, con- 
tinually humbugged; and worse, many of the 
wealthy and intelligent, through their stake in 
valuable city franchises, are incompetent to deal 
fairly with the municipal affairs of their own city. 
Both in England and in America, the man in the 
street is quite sound in his judgment, when he de- 
clines to trust those who dabble in securities with 
which their own department has dealings. The 
British Caesar's wife official, caught with a hand- 
kerchief on her person, woven on the looms of a 
company whose directors are dealing with the 
British government, can hardly claim exemption 
from suspicion, because she bought the handkerchief 
in America. We all know that when London sniffles 
the value of handkerchiefs goes up in New York. 
Caesar's wife finds it difficult to persuade honorable 
men that she merely had a financial cold, but not the 
smallest interest in a corner in handkerchiefs. 

181 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

In the great majority of German cities public- 
utility services, gas, water, electricity, street-rail- 
ways, slaughter-houses, and even canals, docks, and 
pawn-shops are owned and controlled by the cities 
themselves. There is no loop-hole for private 
plunder, and there is, on the contrary, every in- 
centive to all citizens, and to the rich in particular, 
to enforce the strictest economy and the most ex- 
pert efficiency. 

What theatres, opera-houses, orchestras, mu- 
seums, what well-paved and clean streets, what 
parks Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, and San 
Francisco might have, had these cities only a part 
of the money, of which in the last twenty-five years 
they have been robbed! It is true that the older 
cities of Germany have traditions behind them that 
we lack. Art treasures, old buildings, and an intel- 
ligent population demanding the best in music and 
the drama we cannot hope to supply, but good house- 
keeping is another matter. Berlin, for example, is 
a new city as compared with New York, Boston, 
Philadelphia, and Detroit, and its growth has been 
very rapid. 

It cannot be said for us alone that we have grown 
so fast that we have had no time to keep pace with 
the needs of our population. Berlin, all Germany 
indeed, has been growing at a prodigious rate. The 
population of Berlin in 1800 was 100,000; in 1832 
only 250,000; hardly half a million in 1870; while 
the population now is over 2,000,000, and over 
3,000,000 if one includes the suburbs, which are for 
all practical purposes part and parcel of Berlin. 

182 



BERLIN 

tharlottenburg, for example, with a population of 
19,517 in 1 87 1, now has a population of 305,976, 
and the vicinage of Berlin has grown in every direc- 
tion in like proportions. 

There were no towns in Germany till the eighth 
century, except those of the Romans on the Rhine 
and the Danube. In 1850 there were only 5 towns 
in Germany with more than 100,000 inhabitants, 
and in 1870 only 8; in 1890, 26; in 1900, 33; in 
1905, 41; in 1910, 47; and nearly the whole in- 
crease of population is now massed in the middle- 
sized and large cities. The same may be said of the 
drift of population in America. " A thrifty but 
rather unprogressive provincial town of 60,000 in- 
habitants," writes Mr. J. H. Harper, of New York, 
in 1810. 

Between i860 and 1900 the proportion of urban 
to rural population in the United States more than 
doubled. In the last ten years the percentage of 
people living in cities, or other incorporated places 
of more than 2,500 inhabitants, increased from 40.5 
to 46.3 per cent, of the total ; while twenty years ago 
only 36.1 per cent, of the population lived in such 
incorporated places. 

As late as the thirteenth century the Christian 
chivalry of the time was spending itself in the task 
of converting the heathen of what is now Prussia; 
and it was well on into the nineteenth century before 
the newness and rawness of the population, in the 
serfdom was entirely abolished in this region. It is 
streets of the great German and Prussian capital 
which surprise and puzzle the American, almost 

183 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

more than the cleanliness and orderliness of the 
streets themselves. It is as though a powerful mon- 
arch had built a fine palace and then, for lack of 
company, had invited the people from the fields and 
farm-yards to be his companions therein. 

" Jamais un lourdaud, quoi qu'il fasse 
Ne saurait passer pour galaud." 

One should read Hazlitt's "Essay on the Cock- 
ney " to find phrases for these Berliners. It is a gaz- 
ing, gaping crowd that straggles along over the 
broad sidewalks. Half a dozen to a dozen will stop 
and stare at people entering or leaving vehicles, at 
a shop, or hotel door. I have seen a knot of men 
stop and stare at the ladies entering a motor-car, 
and on one occasion one of them wiped off the glass 
with his hand that he might see the better. It is not 
impertinence, it is merely bucolic naivete. The city 
in the evening is like a country fair, with its awk- 
ward gallantries, its brute curiosity, its unabashed 
expressions of affection by hands and lips, its ogling, 
coughing, and other peasant forms of flirtation. It 
should be remembered that this people as a race show 
somewhat less of reticence in matters amatory than 
we are accustomed to. In the foyer of the theatre 
you may see a young officer walking round and 
round, his arm under that of his fiancee or bride, 
and her hand fondly clasped in his. It is a com- 
mentary, not a criticism, on international manners 
that the German royal princess, a particularly sweet 
and simple maiden, just engaged to marry the heir 
of the house of Cumberland, is photographed walk- 

184 



BERLIN 

ing in the streets of Berlin, her hand clasped in that 
of her betrothed, and both he, and her brother who 
accompanies them, smoking! Gentlemen do not 
smoke when walking or driving with ladies, with 
us, though I am not claiming that it is a moral 
disaster to do so. It is a difference in the grada- 
tions of respect worth noting, but nothing more. 
I have even seen kissing, as a couple walked up the 
stairs from one part of the theatre to another. In 
the spring and summer the paths of the Tier g art en 
of a morning are strewn with hair-pins, a curious, 
but none the less accurate, indication of the rather 
fumbling affection of the night before. 

To live in a fashionable hotel, in a land whose 
people you wish to study, is as valueless an ex- 
perience as to go to a zoological garden to learn 
to track a mountain sheep or to ride down a wild 
boar. You must go about among the people them- 
selves, to their restaurants, to their houses, if they 
are good enough to ask you, and to the resorts of 
all kinds that they frequent. 

The manners are better than in my student days, 
but there is still a deal of improvised eating and 
drinking. There is much tucking of napkins under 
chins that the person may be shielded from mis- 
directed food-offerings. There is not a little use 
of the knife where the fork or spoon is called for; 
but this last I always look upon as a remnant of 
courage, of the virility remaining in the race from 
a not distant time when the knife served to clear 
the forest, to build the hut, to kill the deer, and to 
defend the family from the wolf; and the traditions 

185 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

of such a weapon still give it predominance over 
the more epicene fork, as a link with a stirring past. 
Mere daintiness in feeding is characteristic of the 
lapdog and other over-protected animals. Unthink- 
ing courage in the matter of victuals is rather a re- 
lief from the strained and anxious hygienic watchful- 
ness of the overcivilized and the overrich. The body 
should be, and is, regarded by wholesome-minded 
people, not as an idol, but as an instrument. The 
German no doubt sees something ignominious in 
counting as one chews a chop, in the careful measur- 
ing of one's liquids, in the restricting of oneself to 
the diet of the squirrel and the cow. He would 
perhaps prefer to lose a year or two of life rather 
than to nut and spinach himself to longevity. The 
wholesome body ought of course to be unerring and 
automatic in its choice of the quantity and quality 
of its fuel. 

A well-dressed man in Berlin is almost as con- 
spicuous as a dancing bear. This comparison may 
lead the stranger to infer, in spite of what has been 
said of the orderliness of Berlin, that dancing bears 
are permitted in the streets. It is only fair to 
Berlin's admirable police president, von Jagow, to 
say that they are not. 

If one leaves the officers, who are a 'fine, up- 
standing, well-groomed lot, out of the account, the 
inhabitants of Berlin are almost grotesque in their 
dowdiness. This is the more remarkable for the 
reason that the citizens of Berlin, wherever you see 
them, not only in the West-end, but in the tenement 
districts, in the public markets, going to or coming 

1 86 



BERLIN 

from the suburban trains, in the trams and under- 
ground railway, in the cheaper restaurants and plea- 
sure resorts, taking their Sunday outing, or in the 
fourth-class carriages of the railway trains, or their 
children in the schools, show a high level of com- 
fort in their clothing. There is poverty and wretch- 
edness in Berlin, of which later, but in no great 
city even in America, does the mass of the people 
give such an air of being comfortably clothed and 
fed. 

We have been deluged of late years with figures 
in regard to the cost of living in this country and 
in that, and never are statistics such " damned lies " 
as in this connection. There is better and cheaper 
food in Berlin, and in the other cities of Germany, 
than anywhere else in our white man's world. Hav- 
ing for the moment no free-trade, or protectionist, 
or tariff-reform axe to grind, and having tested the 
pudding not by my prejudices but my palate, and 
having eaten a fifteen-pfennig luncheon in the street, 
and climbed step by step the gastronomical stairway 
in Germany all the way up to a supper at the court, 
where eight hundred odd people were served with a 
care and celerity, and with hot viands and irreproach- 
able potables, that made one think of the " Arabian 
Nights," I offer my experience and my opinion with 
some confidence. You can get enough to stave off 
hunger for a few pfennigs, you can get a meal for 
something under twenty-five cents, and the whole 
twenty-five cents will include a glass of the best 
beer in the world outside of Munich. If you care to 
spend fifty cents there are countless restaurants 

187 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

where you can have a square meal and a glass of 
beer for that price ; and for a dollar I will give you 
as good a luncheon with wine as any man with un- 
damaged taste and unspoiled digestion ought to 
have. 

There is one restaurant in Berlin which feeds 
as many as five thousand people on a Sunday, where 
you can dine or sup, and listen to good music, and 
enjoy your beer and tobacco for an hour afterward, 
and all for something under fifty cents if you are 
careful in your ordering. During my walks in the 
country around Berlin, I have often had an omelette 
followed by meat and vegetables, and cheese, and 
compote, and Rhine wine, with all the bread I 
wanted, and paid a bill for two persons of a little 
over a dollar. The Brodchen, or rolls, seem to be 
everywhere of uniform size and quality, and the 
butter always good. 

Paris is fast losing its place as the home of 
good all-round eating as compared with Berlin. Of 
course, New York for geographical reasons, and 
also because the modern Maecenas lives there, is 
nowadays the place where Lucullus would invite his 
emperor to dine if he came back to earth; but I am 
not discussing the nectar and ambrosia classes, but 
the beer, bread, and pork classes, and certainly Ber- 
lin has no rival as a provider for them. 

After all our study of statistics, of figures, of 
contrasts, I am not sure that we arrive at any very 
valuable conclusions. American working classes 
work ever shorter hours, gain higher wages, but they 
are indubitably less happy, less rich in experience, 

1 88 



BERLIN 

less serene than the Germans. This measuring 
things by dollars, by hours, by pounds and yard- 
sticks, measures everything accurately enough ex- 
cept the one thing we wish to measure, which is a 
man's soul. We are producing the material things 
of life faster, more cheaply, more shoddily, but 
it is open to question whether we are producing 
happier men and women, and that is what we are 
striving to do as the end of it all. Nothing is of 
any value in the world that cannot be translated 
into the terms of man-making, or its value mea- 
sured by what it does to produce a man, a woman, 
and children living happily together. Wealth does 
not do this ; indeed, wealth beyond a certain limit is 
almost certain to destroy the foundation of all peace, 
a contented family. 

A shady beer-garden, capital music, and happy 
fathers and mothers and children, what arithmetic, 
or algebra, or census tells you anything of that? 
The infallible recipe for making a child unhappy, 
is to give it everything it cries for of material things, 
and never to thwart its will. We throw wages and 
shorter hours of work at people, but that is only 
turning them out of prison into a desert. No 
statistics can deal competently with the compara- 
tive well-being of nations, and nothing is more 
ludicrous than the results arrived at where Ger- 
many is discussed by the British or American pol- 
itician. Whatever figures say, and whatever else 
they may lack, they are better clothed, better fed 
and cared for, and have far more opportunities for 
rational enjoyment, and a thousand-fold more for 

189 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

aesthetic enjoyment than either the English or the 
Americans. That they lack freedom, in our sense, 
is true, but freedom is for the few. The world- 
wide complaint of the hardship of constant work is 
rather silly, for most of us would die of monotony 
if we were not forced to work to keep alive, and to 
make a living. 

The city, with its broad, clean streets, its beau- 
tiful race-course, shaded walks, its forests and lakes, 
toward Potsdam, or at Tegel, or Werder, when the 
blossoms are out, with its well-kept gardens, its pro- 
fusion of flowers and shrubs and trees, is physically 
the most wholesome great city in the world; but 
Hans bleibt immer Hans! Goethe, after a visit to 
Berlin, wrote : " There are no more ungodly com- 
munities than in Berlin." 1 

No one knows his Berlin better than that prince 
of German literary Bohemians, Paul Lindau, and he 
makes a character in one of his novels say of it: 
" untidy and orderly, so boisterous and so regu- 
lated, so boorish and so kindly, so indescribable — 
•so Berlinish — just that! " 2 

In another place the same author writes : " Ber- 
lin as the Capital of the German Empire! There 
are many respects in which it nevertheless hasn't yet 
succeeded in taking on the character of a cosmopoli- 
tan city." 3 Not even literature finds material for 

1 " Es giebt keine gottlosere Volker als in Berlin." 

2 " Staubig und ordentlich, so laut und geregelt, so grob 

und gemutlich, so unbeschreiblich, so berlinerisch, gerade so ! " 
8 " Berlin als Hauptstadt des deutschen Reiches : in mancher 

Beziehung hatte es sich dem weltstadtischen Charakter doch 

noch nicht aneignen konnen." 

190 



BERLIN 

a city novel. There is no Balzac, no Thackeray. 
Germany is still dominated by the village and the 
town. Goethe, Auerbach, Spielhagen, Heyse, Gott- 
fried Keller, Freytag, my unread favorite " Fritz " 
Reuter, deal not with the life of cities. There is 
as yet no drama, no novel, no art, no politics born 
of the city. There is no domineering Paris or Lon- 
don or New York as yet. 

After some years of acquaintance with Germany 
as school-boy, as student at the universities, and 
lately as a most hospitably received guest by all sorts 
and conditions of men, I do not remember meeting 
a fop. A German Beau Brummel is as impossible as 
a French Luther, an American Goethe, or an En- 
glish Wagner. We have had attempts at foppery in 
America, but no real fops. A genuine fop, whether 
in art, in literature, or in costumes, must have brains, 
ours have been merely effigies, foppery taking the 
dull commercial form of a great variety of raiment. 
It is a strange contradiction in German life that 
while they are as a people governed minutely and 
in detail, forbidden personal freedom along certain 
lines to which we should find it hard to submit, they 
tare freer morally, freer in their literature, their 
art, their music, their social life, and in their un- 
self -conscious expression of them than other people. 
There is a curious combination of legal and gov- 
ernmental slavery, and of spiritual and intellectual 
freedom; of innumerable restrictions, and great 
liberty of personal enjoyment, and that enjoyment 
of the most naif kind. They seem to have done less 
to destroy life's palate with the condiments of civ- 

191 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

ilization, and therefore, still find plain things sa- 
vorous. 

I am not sure that the ecumenical sophistication, 
known as world-etiquette, marks a very high de- 
gree of knowledge or usefulness anywhere. To 
know which hat goes with which boots, and what 
collar and tie with what coat and waistcoat, and 
what costume is appropriate at 10 a. m., and what at 
10 p. m., and to know the names of the head- waiters 
of the principal restaurants, are minor matters. 
These are the conveniences of the gentleman, but 
the characteristic burdens of the ass. Such a men- 
tal equipment is not the stuff of which soldiers, 
sailors, statesmen, explorers, or governors are made. 

We must not overrate the value of this feminine 
worldliness in judging the Germans. This effemi- 
nate categorical imperative of etiquette has not in- 
fluenced them greatly as yet. But on the other hand, 
one must claim for the amenities of life that they 
have their value, that they are, after all, the ex- 
ternal decorations of an inward discipline. It is 
not necessarily a fine disdain of material things, but 
rather a keen sense of moral and physical efficiency, 
which pays due heed to wherewithal ye shall be 
clothed, at any rate, outside of Palestine. Those 
who dream and discuss may wear anything or 
nothing. It mattered not what Socrates wore. But 
men of action must wear the easy armor that fits 
them best for their particular task. Men who toil 
either at their pleasure or at their work must change 
their raiment, if only for the sake of rest and health. 
Now that government is in the hands of the vocifer- 

192 



BERLIN 

ators rather than the meditaters, even politicians 
must look to their costumes, merely out of regard 
to cleanliness. Evening clothes with a knitted tie 
dribbling down the shirt front ; frock-coat as a frame 
for a colored waistcoat such as at shooting, or rid- 
ing, or golf, we permit ourselves to break forth in, 
as a weak surrender to the tailor, or to the ingenuity 
of our womenfolk who are not " unbred to spin- 
ning, in the loom unskilled " ; the extraordinary 
indulgence in personal fancies in the choice of 
colored ties, as though the male citizens of Ber- 
lin had been to an auction of the bastards of a rain- 
bow; the little melon-shaped hats with a band of 
thick velvet around them; the awkward slouching 
gait, as of men physically untrained; the enormous 
proportion of men over forty, who follow behind 
their stomachs and turn their toes out at an angle 
of more than forty-five degrees, whose necks lie in 
folds over their collars, and whose whole appearance 
denotes an uncared-for person and a negligence of 
domestic hygiene : these things are significant. No 
man who walks with his toes pointing southwest by 
south, and southeast by south, when he is going 
south, will ever get into France on his own feet, 
carrying a knapsack and a rifle. Cranach's paint- 
ing of Duke Henry the Pious, in the Dresden Gal- 
lery, gives an accurate picture of the way many 
Germans still stand and walk; while every athlete 
knows that runners and walkers put their feet down 
straight, or with a tendency to turn them in rather 
than out. The Indians of northwest India, and the 
Indians of our own West are good examples of this. 

193 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

It is evident that the orderliness of Berlin is en- 
forced orderliness and not voluntary orderliness. 
Both pedestrians and drivers of all sorts of vehi- 
cles, take all that is theirs and as much more as pos- 
sible. There is none of the give and take, and 
innate love of fair play and instinctive wish to give 
the other fellow a chance, so noticeable in London 
streets, whether on the sidewalks or in the road- 
way. There is a general chip-on-the-shoulder atti- 
tude in Prussia, which may be said, I think not un- 
fairly, to be evident in all ranks, from their recent 
foreign diplomacy, down to the pedestrians and 
drivers. 

Many people whom I have met, not only for- 
eigners but Germans from other parts of Germany, 
are loud in their denunciations of the Berliners. 
" Freeh " and " roh " are adjectives often used about 
them. There is a surly malice of speech and manner 
among the working classes, that seems to indicate 
a wish to atone for political impotence, by braggart 
impudence to those whom they regard as superior. 
When we played horse as children, we champed 
the wooden bit, shied, and balked and kicked, and 
the worse we behaved the more spirited horses we 
thought ourselves. There is a certain social and 
political radicalism verging upon anarchy, which 
plays at life in much the same way, with no better 
reason, and with little better result. Shying, balk- 
ing, and kicking, and champing the political bit, are 
only spirited to the childish. 

Their awkward and annoying attentions to wo- 
men alone on the streets; their staring and gaping; 

194 



BERLIN 

their rudeness in pushing and shoving; the general 
underbred look, the slouching gate, the country-store 
clothes, hats, and boots; the fearful and wonderful 
combinations of raiment; the sweetbread complex- 
ions, as of men under-exercised and not sufficiently- 
aired and scrubbed; their stiff courtesy to one an- 
other when they recognize acquaintances with hat- 
sweeping bows; their fierce gobbling in the restau- 
rants ; their lack of small services and attentions to 
their own women when they go about in public 
with them; their selfish disregard of others in pub- 
lic places, their giving and taking of hats, coats, 
sticks, and umbrellas at the garde-robes of the thea- 
tres, for example; their habit of straggling about 
in the middle of the streets, like the chickens and 
geese on a country road: all these things I have 
noted too, but I must admit the surprising personal 
conclusion that I have grown to like the people. 
A good pair of shoulders and an engaging smile go 
far to mitigate these nuisances. It makes for good 
sense in this matter of criticism always to bear in 
mind that delicious piece of humor of the psalmist: 
" Let the righteous rather smite me friendly ; and 
reprove me. But let not their precious balms break 
my head." The " precious balms" of the lofty and 
righteous critic are not of much value when they 
merely break heads. 

I have been all over Berlin, and in all sorts of 
places, by day and by night. I have found myself 
seated beside all sorts of people in restaurants and 
public places, and I have yet to chronicle any rude- 
ness to me or mine. I like their innocent curiosity, 

195 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

their unsophisticated ways, their bumpkin love- 
making in public ; and many a time I have found en- 
tertainment from odd companions who seated them- 
selves near me, when I have strayed into the cheaper 
restaurants, to hear and to see something of the Ber- 
liner in his native wilds. Their malice and rude- 
ness and apparent impertinences are due to lack 
of experience, to the fact that their manners are 
still untilled, I believe, rather than to intentional in- 
sult. They are not house-broken to their new capi- 
tal, that is all, and that will come in time. Their 
malicious jealousy peeps out in all sorts of ways. 
In the lower house of the Prussian Diet, recently, a 
member protested vigorously against the employ- 
ment of an American singer in the Opera House! 
Chauvinism carried to this extreme becomes comic, 
and is noted here only to indicate to what depths 
of farm-yard provinciality some of the citizens of 
this great city can descend. 

They are dreamers and sentimentalists too. There 
are more kissing, more fondling, more exuberance 
of affection, more displays of friendliness in Ger- 
many in a week than in England and America in 
six months. I confess without shame that 1 like to 
see it, and when it comes my way, as beyond my 
deserts it has, I like to feel it. How lasting is this 
friendliness I have no means of knowing till the 
years to come tell me, but that it is a pleasant at- 
mosphere to live in there can be no doubt. 

The driving is of the very worst. A man behind 
a horse, or horses, who knows even the elements of 
handling the reins and the whip and the brake, 

196 



BERLIN 

would be a curiosity indeed. I have not seen a 
dozen coachmen, private or public, to whom my 
youngest child could not have given invaluable 
suggestions as to the bitting, harnessing, and hand- 
ling of his cattle. On the other hand, I one day saw 
a street sign twisted out of its place. I was fas- 
cinated by this unexampled mark of negligence. I 
determined to watch that sign; alas, within forty- 
eight hours it was put right again. 

Let it not be understood that there are no fine 
horses to be seen in Berlin. You will go far to find 
a better lot of horse-flesh, or better-looking men on 
the horses, than you will see when the Kaiser rides 
by to the castle after his morning exercise; and he 
sits his horse and manages him with the easy skill 
of the real horseman, and looks every inch a king 
besides. It is told of Daniel Webster, walking in 
London, that a navvy turned to his companion and 
remarked: "That bloke must be a king!" You 
would say the same of the Kaiser if you saw him 
on horseback. 

At horse shows and in the Tiergarten, and in 
riding-places in other cities, I have looked at hun- 
dreds of horses, and, if I mistake not, Germany is 
both buying and breeding the very best in the way 
of mounts, though their civilian riders are often 
of the scissors variety. There are comparatively 
few harness horses, and in Berlin scarcely a dozen 
well-turned-out private carriages, outside the im- 
perial equipages, which are always superbly horsed 
and beautifully turned out; so my eyes tell me at 
least, and I have watched the streets carefully for 

197 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

months. The minor details of a properly turned- 
out carriage (bits, chains, liveries, saddle-cloths, and 
so on) are still unknown here. I have had the priv- 
ilege of driving and riding some of the horses in the 
imperial stables ; and I have seen all of them at one 
time or another being exercised in harness and under 
the saddle. I have never driven a better-mannered 
four, or ridden more perfectly broken saddle-horses. 
There are three hundred and twenty-six horses in 
his Majesty's stables, and for a private stable of its 
size it has no equal in the world. I may add, too, 
that there is probably no better " whip " in the 
world to-day, whether with two horses, four horses, 
or six horses, than the gentleman who trains the 
harness horses in the imperial stables. This Ger- 
man coachman would be a revelation at a horse 
show in either New York or London. If the citi- 
zens of Berlin were as well-mannered as the horses 
in the imperial stables, this would be the most ele- 
gant capital in the world. It is to be regretted that 
his Majesty's very accomplished master of the horse 
cannot also hold the position of censor morum to the 
citizens of Berlin. Individual prowess in the de- 
tails of cosmopolitan etiquette has not reached a 
high level, but in all matters of mere house-keeping 
there are no better municipal housewives than these 
German cities and towns. 

As a further example, the statues of Berlin are 
carefully cleaned in the spring, but what statues! 
With the exception of the Lessing, the Goethe, and 
the Great Elector statues, the statue of Frederick 
the Great, and the reclining statues of the late em- 

198 



BERLIN 

peror and empress, by Begas, and one or two others, 
one sees at once that these citizens are no more ca- 
pable of ornamenting their city than of dressing 
themselves. 

Poor Bismarck! Grotesque figures (men, wo- 
men, animals) surround the base of his statue in 
Berlin, in Leipsic; and in Hamburg, clad in a cor- 
rugated golf costume, with a colossal two-handed 
sword in front of him, he is a melancholy figure, 
gazing out over a tumble-down beer-garden. At 
Wannsee, near Berlin, there is, I must admit, a 
really fine bust of Bismarck. On a solid square 
pedestal of granite, covered with ivy and surrounded 
by the whispering, or sighing, or creaking and crack- 
ing trees that he loved, and facing the setting sun, 
and alone in a secluded corner, just the place he 
would have chosen, there are the head and shoulders 
of the real Bismarck. Here for once he has escaped 
the fussy attentions of the artistry that he detested. 
Lehnbach, who painted Bismarck so many scores 
of times, never gave him the color that his face 
kept all through life, and with the exception of this 
bust, of the scores of Bismarck memorials one sees 
all commiserate the lack of artist ability; they do 
not commemorate Bismarck. If this is what they 
do to the greatest man in their history, what is to 
be expected elsewhere? What has poor Joachim 
Friedrich done that he should pose forever in 
the Sieges Allee as an intoxicated hitching-post ? 
What, indeed, have his companions done that they 
should stand in two rows there, studies in contor- 
tion, with a gilded Russian dancer with wings at 

199 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

one end of their line, and a woodeny Roland at the 
other? But there they are, simpering a paltry 
patriotism, insipid as history and ridiculous as art. 
What has become of Lessing, and Winckelmann, 
and Goethe, and their teachings? Is this the 
price that a nation must pay for its industrial 
progress ? 

The German, with all his boasting about the 
"centre of culture/' has not discovered that the 
beauty of antiquity is the expression of those vir- 
tues which were useful at the time of Theseus, as 
Stendhal rightly tells us. Individual force, which 
was everything of old, amounts to almost nothing 
in our modern civilization. The monk who in- 
vented gunpowder modified sculpture; strength is 
only necessary now among subalterns. No one 
thinks of asking whether Frederick the Great and 
Napoleon were good swordsmen. The strength we 
admire, is the strength of Napoleon advancing alone 
upon the First Battalion of the royal troops near 
Lake Lofifrey in March, 1815; that is strength of 
soul. The moral qualities with which we are con- 
cerned are no longer the same as in the days of the 
Greeks. Before this cockney sculpture was planned, 
there should have been a closer study of the history 
and philosophy of art in Berlin. 

It is true that we in America are living in a glass 
house to some extent in these matters, but where in 
all Germany is there any modern sculpture to com- 
pare with our Nathan Hale, our Minute Man, and 
that most spirited bit of modern plastic art in all the 
world, the Shaw Monument in Boston? You can* 

200 



BERLIN 

not stand in front of it without keeping time, and 
here lips of bronze sing the song of patriotism till 
your heart thumps, and you are ready to throw up 
your hat as the splendid young figure and his negro 
soldiers march by — and they do march by! It is 
almost a consolation for what Boston has done to 
that gallant soldier and humble servant of God, that 
modest gentleman, Phillips Brooks. In a statue to 
him they have travestied the virtues he expounded, 
slain the ideal of the Christ he preached, theatrical- 
ized the least theatrical of men, and placed this 
piece of mortifying misunderstanding in bronze 
under the very eaves of the house that grew out of 
his simple eloquence. There is in Leipsic a similar 
misdemeanor in a statue of Beethoven. He sits, 
naked to the waist, in a bronze chair, with a sort 
of bath-towel drapery of colored marble about his 
legs, and an eagle in front of him. He has a chauf- 
feur ish expression of anxious futility, as though he 
were about to run over the eagle. 

Men are without great dreams in these days, and 
art is elaborate and fussy and self-conscious. The 
technical part of the work is predominant. One 
sees the artist holding up a mirror to himself as he 
works. Pygmalion congratulates the statue upon 
the fact that he carved it, instead of being lost in 
the love of creating. It is as though a lover should 
sing of himself instead of singing of his lady. The 
subtle poison of self-advertisement has crept in, and 
peers like a satyr from the picture and from the 
statue. Even the most prominent name in German 
music at this writing is that of a man who is notori- 

201 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

ous as an expert salesman of symphonic sensational- 
ism. 

Though the streets are so well kept, the buildings 
in these miles of new streets are flimsy-looking, and 
evidently the work of the speculative builder. The 
more pretentious buildings ape a kind of Nuremberg 
Renaissance style, and are as effective as a castle 
made of cardboard. This does not imply that there 
are not simple and solid buildings in Berlin and, in 
the case of the new library and a score of other 
buildings, worthy architecture; but the general im- 
pression is one of haste multiplied by plaster. 

The whole city blossoms with statuary, like a 
cosmopolitan 'Arriet who cannot get enough flowers 
and feathers on her Sunday hat. A certain comic 
anthropomorphism is to be seen, even on the balus- 
trades of the castle, where the good Emperor Wil- 
liam is posed as Jupiter, the Empress Augusta as 
Juno, Emperor Frederick as Mars, and his wife as 
Minerva ! On the fa?ades of houses, on the bridges, 
on the roofs of apartment houses, on the hotels 
even, and scattered throughout the public gardens, 
are scores of statues, and they are for the most part 
what hastily ordered, swiftly completed art, born of 
the dollar instead of the pain and travail of love 
and imagination, must always be. 

A certain literary snob taken to task by Doctor 
Parr for pronouncing the one-time capital of Egypt 
" Alexandria,' ' with the accent on the long i, quoted 
the authority of Doctor Bentley. " Doctor Bentley 
and I," replied Doctor Parr, " may call it ' Alex- 
andria/ but I should advise you to call it ' Alexan- 

202 



BERLIN 

dria.' ' It was all very well for the Medici, to orna- 
ment their cities and their homes with the fruit of 
the great artistic springtime of the world, but I 
should strongly advise the Berliners to pronounce 
it " Alexandria " for some years to come. No mat- 
ter how fervid the lover, nor how possessed he may 
be by his mistress, he cannot turn out every day, 
even, 

"A halting sonnet of his own poor brain, 
Fashion' d to Beatrice." 

All this pretentious over-ornamentation is cosmeti- 
cism, the powder and paint of the vulgarian striving 
to conceal by a futile advertisement her lack of re- 
finement. Paris was teaching the world when there 
was no capital in Germany ; London has been a com- 
mercial centre for a thousand years, and Oxford 
was a hundred years old before even the University 
of Prague, the first in Germany, was founded by 
Charles IV in 1348. You may like or dislike these 
cities, but, at any rate, they have a bouquet; Berlin 
has none. 

When Germany deals with the inanimate and 
amenable factors of life, she brings the machinery 
of modern civilization well-nigh to the point of 
perfection. As a municipal and national housewife 
she has no equal, none. But art has nothing to do 
with brooms and dust-pans, and human nature is 
woven of surprises and emergencies, and what then? 
An interesting example in the streets of Berlin is 
the difference between the perfection of the street- 
cleaning, which deals with the inanimate and with 

203 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

accurately calculable factors, and the governing of 
the street traffic. Horses and men and motor-driven 
vehicles are not as dependable as blocks of pave- 
ment. When the traffic in the Berlin streets grows 
to the proportions of London, Paris, and New 
York, one wonders what will happen. Nowhere are 
there such broad, well-kept streets in which the 
traffic is so awkwardly handled. 

The police are all, and must be, indeed, non- 
commissioned officers of the army, of nine years' 
service, and not over thirty-five years of age. They 
are armed with swords and pistols by night, and in 
the rougher parts of the town with the same weapons 
by day as well. After ten years' service they are 
entitled to a pension of twenty-sixtieths of their 
pay with an increase of one-sixtieth for each fur- 
ther year of service. They are not under the city, 
but under state control, and the chief of police is a 
man of distinction, nearly always a nobleman, and 
nominated by, and in every case approved by, the 
Emperor. In Berlin he is appointed by the King 
of Prussia. He is a man of such standing that he 
may be promoted to cabinet rank. The men are 
well-turned out, of heavy build, very courteous to 
strangers, so far as my experience can speak for 
them, and quiet and self -controlled. Under the 
police president are one colonel of police, receiving 
from 6,000 to 8,500 marks, according to his length 
of service; 3 majors, receiving from 5,400 to 6,600 
marks; 20 captains, receiving from 4,200 to 5,400 
marks; 156 lieutenants, receiving from 3,000 to 
4,500 marks; 450 sergeants, receiving from 1,650 

204 



BERLIN 

to 2,300 marks; and 5,382 patrolmen, receiving 
from 1,400 to 2,100 marks. There are also some 
300 mounted police, receiving from 1,400 to 2,600 
marks. The colonel, majors, and captains receive 
1,300 marks additional, and the lieutenants 800 
marks additional, for house rent. The mounted 
police are well-horsed, but it is no slight to them 
to say, however, that their horses are not so well 
trained and well mannered, nor the men such skil- 
ful horsemen, as those of our mounted squad in 
New York, who, man for man and horse for 
horse, are probably unequalled anywhere else in the 
world. 

The demand for these non-commissioned offi- 
cers of nine years of army discipline, who cannot 
be called upon to serve in the army again, has grown 
with the growth of the great city, with its need of 
porters, watchmen, and the like, and so valuable 
are their services deemed that the present police 
force of Berlin is short of its proper number by 
some seven hundred men. 

The examination of those about to become police- 
men extends over four weeks, and includes every 
detail of the multiplicity of duties, which ranges 
from the protection of the public from crime, down 
to tracking down truants from school, and the reg- 
ulation of the books of the maid-servant class. The 
policeman who aspires to the rank of sergeant un- 
dergoes a still more rigorous examination, extend- 
ing over twenty weeks of preparation, during which 
time he studies — note this list, ye " young bar- 
barians all at play," German, rhetoric, writing, arith- 

205 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

metic, common fractions, geography, history, es- 
pecially the history of the House of Hohenzollern 
from the time of the margraves to the present time 
( !) political divisions of the earth, especially of 
Prussia and Germany, the essential features of the 
constitution of the Prussian Kingdom and German 
Empire, the organization and working of the vari- 
ous state authorities in Prussia and Germany, ele- 
mentary methods of disinfection, common veteri- 
nary remedies, the police law as applicable to innu- 
merable matters from the treatment of the drunk, 
blind, and lame, to evidences of murder, and the 
press law. The man who passes such an examina- 
tion would be more than qualified to take a degree, 
at one of our minor colleges, if he knew English and 
the classics were not required, and could well afford 
to sniff disdainfully at the pelting shower of hon- 
orary degrees of Doctor of Divinity, which descend 
from the commencement platforms of our more 
girlish intellectual factories of orthodoxy. 

The cost of the police in Berlin in 1880 was 2,- 
494,722 marks; in 1890, 3,007,879 marks; in 1900, 
6,065,975 marks; and in 19x0, 8,708,165 marks. 

I fancy that after an accident has taken place the 
literary, legal, and hygienic details are cared for by 
the Berlin police as nowhere else. In their manage- 
ment of the traffic they are distinctly lacking in de- 
cision and watchfulness. On the western side of the 
Brandenburger Tor there is seldom an hour, without 
a tangle of traffic which is entirely unnecessary if 
the police knew their business. On the Tiergarten 
Strasse, a rather narrow and much used thorough- 

206 



BERLIN 

fare in the fashionable part of the town, trucks, cabs, 
and other vehicles are not kept close to the curbs, 
often they drive along in pairs, slowing up all the 
traffic, and at the east end of the street is a corner 
which could easily be remedied by the building of 
a " refuge," and an authoritative policeman to guard 
the three approaches. Not once, but scores of 
times, at the very important corner of Unter den 
Linden and Wilhelm Strasse I have seen the police- 
man talking to friends on the curb, quite oblivious 
to a scramble of cabs, wagons, and motors at cross 
purposes in the street. Potsdamer Platz presents a 
difficult problem at all times of the day, especially 
when the crowds are coming from or going toward 
home, but a few ropes and iron standards, and four 
alert Irish policemen, would make it far plainer 
sailing than now it is. It is to be remembered, too, 
that the traffic is a mere dribble as compared to a 
torrent, when one remembers Paris, New York, and 
London. In 1909 the street accidents in Paris num- 
bered 65,870, and there was one summons for every 
yy motor taxicabs, but Paris is now without a 
rival as the dirtiest, worst-paved capital in Europe, 
and the home of social anarchy; a place where ad- 
venturous spirits will go soon rather than to Africa, 
or to the Rocky Mountains, for excitement in affrays 
with revolvers, vitriol, and chloroform. 

In London, in 1909, there were 13,388 accidents. 
In Berlin there was a total of 4,895 accidents in 
1900; 4,797 in 1905 ; and 4,233 in 19 10. One hun- 
dred persons were killed in 1900; 115 in 1905; and 
136 in 19 10. In this connection it is to be said, that 

207 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Berlin has fewer and much less adventurous in- 
habitants, very much less complicated traffic, much 
broader and better streets, and far fewer problems 
than the older cities. If the citizens of Berlin were 
anything like as capable of taking care of themselves 
in the streets, as they should be, there would be 
hardly any accidents at all. The new police regu- 
lation of the traffic has been only some four or five 
years in existence in its more rigid form, and per- 
haps neither people nor police are accustomed to it. 
Even then, out of the total of 4,233 accidents in 
19 10, 1,876 of them were caused by the street-rail- 
way cars. This shows of itself how light the traffic 
must be, for worse driving and more awkward pe- 
destrians one would go far to find. 

The cost of Berlin housekeeping increases by leaps 
and bounds. The total city expenses were : 45,221,- 
988 marks in 1880; 89,364,270 in 1890; 121,405,- 
356 in 1900; and 355,424,614 in 1910. The debt 
of Berlin has risen from 126,161,605 marks in 1880, 
and 272,912,350 in 1900, to 475>799> 2 3 I ^ 19!°, 
with a very considerable addition voted for 1912. 
In the ten years alone between 1897 an d 1907 the 
debt of German cities including only those with a 
population of more than 10,000, increased by $1,- 
050,000,000. Municipal expenditure in Paris has 
risen in the last ten years from $59,200,000 to $76,- 
000,000. The budget expenditure of France has 
reached $1,040,000,000. In 1898 it was only $600,- 
000,000. 

It cannot be expected that the best-kept, cleanest, 
and most orderly cities in the world, and there need 

208 



BERLIN 

be no hesitation in saying this of the German cities, 
should not spend much money, and the states in 
which they are situated much money as well. The 
various states of the empire spent, according to a 
report of four years ago, $1,352,500,000; and the 
empire itself $738,250,000 or a total of $2,090,750,- 
000. From the various state or empire controlled 
enterprises, such as railways, forests, mines, post 
and telegraph, imperial printing-office, and so on, 
the states and empire received a net income of $216,- 
525,000, and the balance was, of course, raised by 
direct and indirect taxation. 

One may put appropriately enough under this 
heading, the invaluable and unpaid services of a 
host of honorary officials, who render expert service 
both in the state and city governments. There are 
over ten thousand honorary officials in the city of 
Berlin alone, more than three thousand of whom 
serve under the school authorities. They are chosen 
from citizens of standing, education, wealth, and 
ability, and assist in all the departments with advice 
and expert knowledge, and sit upon the various 
committees. The German citizen has not only his 
pocket taxed, but his patriotism also, and a capital 
philosophy of government this implies. 

A friend, a large landholder in Saxony, gives, be- 
tween his services as a reserve officer in the army 
and his magisterial and other duties, something over 
nine weeks of his time to the state every year, and 
he is by no means an exception, he tells me. A cer- 
tain amount of this is required of him by the state, 
with a heavy fine for non-performance of these 

209 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

duties. The same is true of the many members of 
the various standing committees in the cities. Each 
citizen is compelled to contribute a certain propor- 
tion of his mental and moral prowess to the service 
of his state and city, but he receives a return for 
it in his beautifully kept city, in the educational ad- 
vantages, in the theatres, concerts, opera, and in the 
peaceful orderliness, the value of which only the 
foreigner can fully appreciate. 

Almost all the court theatres, for example, 
throughout Germany are under a director who works 
in harmony with the reigning prince. The King of 
Prussia gives for his theatres in Berlin, Wiesbaden, 
Hanover, and Cassel, more than $625,000 a year 
from his private purse; the Duke of Anhalt, $75,- 
000 a year to the Dessauer theatre. The players 
have a sure position under responsible and intelli- 
gent government, and feel themselves to be not mere 
puppets, but educational factors with a certain pride 
and dignity in their work. 

There are more Shakespeare plays given in Ger- 
many in a week than in all the English-speaking 
countries together in a year. This is by no means 
an exaggeration. The theatre is looked upon as a 
school. Fathers and mothers arrange that their older 
children as well as themselves shall attend the theatre 
all through the winter, and subscribe for seats as 
we would subscribe to a lending library. During 
the last year in Germany, the plays of Schiller were 
given 1,584 times, of Shakespeare 1,042 times, the 
music-dramas of Wagner 1,815 times, the plays of 
Goethe 700 times, and of Hauptmann 600 times. 

210 



BERLIN 

There is no spectacular gorgeousness, as when an 
Irving, a Booth, or a Beerbohm Tree sugar-coats 
Shakespeare to induce us barbarians to go, in the 
belief that we are after all not wasting our time, 
since the performance tastes a little of the more 
gorgeous music halls. The scenery and costumes 
are sufficient, and the performance always worth 
intelligent attention, for the reason that both the di- 
rector and his players have given time and scholar- 
ship to its interpretation. The acting is often in- 
different as compared to the French stage, but it 
is at least always in earnest and intelligent. The 
theatre prices in Berlin are high, even as compared 
with New York prices, but in other cities and towns 
of Germany cheaper than in England, France, or 
America. 

Pericles passed a law in Athens by which each 
citizen was granted two oboli, one to pay for his 
seat at the theatre, the other to provide himself with 
refreshment. In Athens the play began at 6 or 7 
a. m., and during the morning three tragedies and a 
satirical drama were played, followed in the after- 
noon by a comedy. The theatre of Dionysius seated 
30,000 people, who brought their cushions, food, 
and drink, and occasionally used them to express 
their dislike of the performance or the performers. 
At one of the larger industrial towns in Germany, 
during a Sunday of my visit, there were three per- 
formances; one at 11 a. m., of a patriotic melo- 
drama, "Glaube und Heimat"; another, at 3.30 
p. m., of " Der Freischiitz " ; and another, at 7.30 
p. m., of Sudermann's play, " Die Ehre." The prices 

211 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

of seats for the morning performance ranged from 
eight cents to forty-five cents ; a little more in the af- 
ternoon; and from seventeen cents to $1.15 in the 
evening. At the performance I attended the house 
was crowded and attentive. I was not enough of an 
Athenian to attend all three. Even at the Music 
Hall in Berlin, where, as in other cities, the thinly 
covered salacious is ladled out to the animal man, 
there was a capital stage caricature of CEdipus, 
which atoned for the customary ewig Ltgliche, 
which now rules in these resorts. If for some un- 
toward reason women ceased to have legs, what 
would the British and American theatrical trust 
managers do ! 

The German takes his theatre and his music, as 
from the beginnings of these it was intended we all 
should do. They are not a distraction merely, but 
an education, an education of the senses, and through 
the senses of the whole man. There are music- 
lovers and serious playgoers in America ; but for the 
most part our theatres cater to, and are filled by, 
a public seeking a soothing and condimented mental 
atmosphere, in which to finish digestion. Theatri- 
cal salmagundi is served everywhere, and seems to 
be the dish best suited to the American aesthetic 
palate as thus far educated. We cannot complain, 
since other wares would be quickly provided did 
we but ask for them. 

America has suffered because she was overtaken 
by a great material prosperity before she had a suf- 
ficient spiritual and intellectual development, and up 
to now the material side of life has had the upper 

212 



BERLIN 

hand. We buy the best pictures, the rare books and 
manuscripts, armor and silver and porcelain, and it 
must be said that there is a fine idealism here, be- 
cause they are bought almost without exception by 
uncultured, often almost unlettered, rich men, who 
know nothing and care very little for these things, 
but who are providing rare educational opportunities 
for another generation. In 19 10 objects of art to 
the value of $22,000,000 were imported, in 191 1 
$36,000,000 worth, and in 19 12 sixty per cent, more 
than in 191 1. In the same way we hire the best 
musicians and singers, but our surroundings and the 
powerful circumambient ambitions, have not tempted 
us as yet to live contentedly and understandingly in 
any such atmosphere as the Germans do. It is a 
striking contrast, perhaps of all the contrasts the 
most interesting to the student, this of America 
growing from industrialism toward idealism, of 
Germany growing out of idealism into industrial- 
ism. 

Germany floats in music; in America a few, a 
very few, float on it. In Germany everybody sings, 
almost everybody plays some instrument, and from 
the youngest to the oldest everybody understands 
music ; at least that is the impression you carry away 
with you from the land of Bach, Handel, Haydn, 
Mozart, and Brahms, and Beethoven, and Wagner, 
and I might fill the page with the others. 

You are at least on the ramparts of Paradise, 
in the Thomas Kirche in Leipsic at the weekly 
Saturday concert of the scholars of the Thomas 
Schule. The worldliness is melted out of you, as 

213 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

you sit in the cool, quiet church with the sunlight 
slanting in upon you, and the atmosphere alive with 
sweet sounds. And this is only one of hundreds 
of such experiences all over Germany. At the Kreuz 
Kirche in Dresden, at the great Dom church in Ber- 
lin at Easter time, for the asking you may have 
the oil and wine of music's Good Samaritan poured 
upon the wounds of those sore-pressed travellers, 
your hopes and ideals, your dreams and ambitions, 
that have fallen among thieves, on the long, long 
way from Jericho to Jerusalem. 

It is, I must admit, a drab and dreary crowd to 
look at, these Germans at the theatre, at the opera, 
in the concert halls. They do not dress, or if they 
are women undress, for their music as do we ; their 
music dresses for them. They come, most of them, 
in the clothes that they have worn all day, each 
quidlibet induitus. They have many of them a meal 
of meat, bread, and beer during the long pause be- 
tween two of the acts, always provided for this 
purpose. Some of them bring little bags with their 
own provisions, and only buy a glass of beer. They 
are solemnly attentive, an educated and experienced 
audience there for a purpose, and not to be trifled 
with, the most competently critical audience in the 
world. I wonder as I look at them whether the 
fact that they have no backs to their heads, em- 
phasized nowadays by the fact that many men wear 
their hair clipped close to the head, and no chins 
(the lack of chins in Germany is almost a national 
peculiarity) has any physiological or psychological 
relation to their prowess in, and love of, and criti- 

214 



BERLIN 

cal appreciation of, the more nebulous arts: music, 
poetry, philosophy, and the serious drama. 

They are as adamant in their observance of the 
rules in such matters. More than once I arrived at 
the opera a few minutes late, once four minutes late, 
the doors are closed and guarded, and I listen to the 
overture from the outside. At a concert led by the 
famous von Bulow half a dozen women come in 
after the music had begun, rustling, sibilant, and 
excited. The music stops, the great conductor turns 
to glare at them, and, referring to the geese which 
are said to have saved Rome by their hissing, thun- 
ders : " Hier ist kein Capitol zu retten ! " 

There are some forty thousand professional 
musicians in Germany. The town council of Ber- 
lin is now discussing gravely the sum to be allotted 
to the support of the Symphony Orchestra, and 
Charlottenburg is building an opera house of its 
own, and Spandau a theatre ; and there has just been 
formed in Berlin a " Society of the German Artistes' 
Theatre/' with a capital of $200,000, which is a 
project along the general lines of the Comedie 
Frangaise. The discussions and arguments relating 
to these municipal expenditures, as I read them in 
the newspapers, are all based upon the assumption 
that the people have a right to good and cheap music, 
just as they have a right to good and cheap beer and 
bread. 

At Diisseldorf one of the theatres, managed by a 
woman, and supported by the best people in the 
town, is not only a playhouse, but a school for 
actors, and a proving-ground for the drama. It is 

2iq 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

a treat indeed to attend the performances there. 
We have tried similar things in America, but with 
sad results. Fifty millionaires, no one of whom 
had ever read the text of a serious play in his life, 
build a temple for the drama, but there are no plays, 
no actors, no audience, nothing is accomplished. 
There is no critical body of real lovers of the drama, 
and there are no cheap seats, and there is still that 
fatuous notion that exclusiveness, except in the 
trifling matter of physical propinquity, can be 
bought with dollars. 

The only impenetrably exclusive thing in the 
world is intellect, he is the only aristocrat left in 
these democratic days, and we are not devoting 
much attention as yet to his breeding. We do not 
realize that the only valuable democrat must bfe an 
aristocrat. " Culture seeks to do away with classes 
and sects; to make the best that has been thought 
and known in the world current everywhere; to 
make all men live in an atmosphere of sweetness and 
light, where they may use ideas, as it uses them it- 
self, freely; nourished and not bound by them. 
This is the social idea; and the men of culture are 
the true apostles of equality." 

In Germany there are more men of culture per 
thousand of the population than in any other land, 
but they rule the country not by " sweetness and 
light," but by force. This seems at first a contra- 
diction. It is not. Religion, life, and love are all 
savage things. Because we have known men who 
preach but do not believe; men who breathe and 
walk who have not lived ; men who protest but who 

216 



BERLIN 

have not loved, we are prone to think of religion, 
life, and love as soft. We have conquered and 
chastened so much of nature: the air, the water, 
the bowels of the earth that we fool ourselves with 
thinking that culture also is tame, that religion, life, 
and love are tame too. Savage things they are! 
You may know them by that! If you find them 
nice, vivacious, amusing, amenable, be sure that they 
are forgeries. 

This is the profound fallacy underlying the 
present-day economic peace propagandism, whose 
heaviest underwriter, Mr. Carnegie, is, by the way, 
an agnostic. While there is faith there will be 
fighting. Do away with either and society would 
crumble. What the Puritans did for us, the Prus- 
sians have done for Germany. They have fought, 
are fighting, and will fight for their faith. Though 
they have many unpleasant characteristics, this is 
their most admirable quality. They believe in an 
aristocracy of culture with a right to rule. Goethe 
said of Luther that he threw back the intellectual 
progress of mankind by centuries, by calling in the 
passions of the multitude to decide on subjects that 
ought to have been left to the learned. This is a 
good example of imitation culture. This is very 
much the view that Mr. Balfour holds in regard to 
Cromwell. But Luther and Bismarck made Ger- 
many. The one taught Germany to bark, the other 
taught Germany to bite. The great deliverers of the 
world came, not to bring peace, but a sword. 

When you leave the drab crowd in the streets, 
and enter the houses of the real rulers of Germany, 

217 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

the contrast between the aristocrat and the plebeian 
is nowhere so outstanding. I have seen no finer- 
looking specimens of mankind in face and figure 
and manner than the best of these men. If you 
stroll through the halls of the Krieges Akademie, 
where the pick of the young officers of the German 
army, are preparing themselves for the examina- 
tions which admit a very small proportion of them, 
to appointments on the general staff, you will be 
delighted with the faces and figures, and the air 
of alertness and intelligence there. And you will 
find as fine a type of gentlemen, in face, manners, 
and figure, at their head as exists anywhere. 

There are complaints that this Prussian aris^ 
tocracy is socially exclusive, is given office both 
in the army and in civil life too readily; but what 
an aristocracy it is! These are the men whose 
families gave, often their all, to make Prussia, and 
then to make Germany. Service of king and coun- 
try is in their blood. They get small remuneration 
for their service. There is no luxury. They spurn 
the temptations of money. Hundreds and hun- 
dreds of them have never been inside the house of a 
rich parvenu, nor have their women. They work 
as no other servants work, they live on little, they 
and their women and children; and you may count 
yourself happily privileged if they permit you the 
intimacy of their home life. 

Officers and gentlemen there are, living on two 
thousand five hundred dollars a year, and most of 
them on much less, and their wives, as well born 
as themselves, darning their socks and counting 

218 



BERLIN 

the pfennigs with scrupulous care. These are the 
women whose ancestors flung themselves against 
the Roman foe, beside their husbands and brothers; 
these are the women who gave their jewels to save 
Prussia; these are the women, with the glint of 
steel and the light of summer skies braided in their 
eyes, who have taken their hard, self-denying part 
in making Prussia, and the German Empire. No 
wonder they despise the mere money-maker, no 
wonder they will have none of his softness for them- 
selves, and hate what Milton calls " lewdly pampered 
luxury," as a danger to their children. They know 
well the moral weapons that won for this starved, 
and tormented, and poverty-stricken land its pres- 
ent place in the world as a great power. 

"And as the fervent smith of yore 
Beat out the glowing blade, 
Nor wielded in the front of war 

The weapons that he made, 

But in the tower at home still plied 

His ringing trade; 

* So like a sword the son shall roam 
On nobler missions sent; 
And as the smith remained at home 

In peaceful turret pent, 
So sits the while at home the mother 
Well content." 

I, convinced democrat that I am, know very well 
that there are, and always have been, and always 
will be aristocrats, for there is no national salva- 
tion without them anywhere in the world. The 
aristocrats are the same everywhere, no matter 

219 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

what their distinctions of title, or whether they 
have none. They are those who believe that they 
owe their best to God and to men, and they serve. 
Likewise the plebeians are the same all over the 
world ; whatever their presumptions or denials, they 
believe that they are here to get what they can out 
of God and men, and they take far more than they 
give. 

Perhaps no feature of German life is so little 
known, so little understood, as this simple-living, 
proud, and exclusive caste, who have made, and 
still protect and guard, Prussia and Germany. 
They say : " We made Prussia and Germany, and 
we intend to guard them, both from enemies at 
home and from enemies abroad ! " My admira- 
tion for these men and women is so unbounded, 
that I would no more carry criticism with me into 
their homes, than I would carry mud into a sanc- 
tuary. 

They have done much for Germany, but the 
best, perhaps, of all is that they have made economy 
and simple living feasible and even fashionable; 
they have made talent aristocratic; they have in- 
sisted that social life shall be founded on service 
and breeding and ability. They will have no deal- 
ings with Herr Mtiller, the rich shopkeeper, but 
whatever name the distinguished artist, or public 
servant, or man of science, or young giant in any 
field of intellectual prowess may bear, he is wel- 
comed. In general this welcome given by German 
society to talent holds good. There is, however, a 
society composed of the great landed proprietors 

220 



BERLIN 

who live in the country, who come to Berlin rarely, 
and whose horizon is limited severely to their own 
small interests, their restricted circle, and by their 
provincial pride. They recognize nobody but them- 
selves, for the reason that they know nobody and 
nothing else. There is an exclusiveness born of 
stupidity, just as there is an exclusiveness born 
of a sense of duty to one's position and traditions 
in the world. One must recognize that this side 
of social life exists in Germany just as it exists 
in England, and France, and Austria, but it is fast 
losing its importance and its power. 

One hears it lamented that society is changing, 
that the rich Jew and the rich gentile are re- 
ceived where twenty-five years ago the social por- 
tals were shut against them, and that many go to 
their houses who would not have gone not many 
years ago. My experience is too slender to weigh 
these matters in years; my contention is only that, 
from an American or English stand-point, their 
social life is notably simple, and still largely 
founded on merit and service, rather than upon 
the means to provide luxury. 

Though there are thousands of people received 
at court each year, this does not mean that they 
are invited to the intimate parties of those in the 
more intimate court circles. They are tolerated, 
not welcomed. Such people are invited to the 
court ball, but never thought of, even, as guests at 
the small supper party of, say, a court official later 
in the evening. Prussia and Germany are still 
ruled socially and politically by a small group of, 

221 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

roughly, fifty thousand men, eight thousand of 
them in the frock-coat of the civilian official, and 
the rest in military uniforms. Added to this must 
be named a few great financiers, shipping and min- 
ing and industrial magnates, and great land-owners, 
and less than half a dozen journalists, and as 
many professors. 

According to the census there are in all only 
720 persons in Berlin with incomes of more than 
$25,000 a year, and 521 of these have between 
$25,000 and $60,000 a year, leaving a very small 
number, indeed, with incomes adequate, from an 
American point of view, for extravagant social 
expenditure. Of these 200, probably not 50 are 
figures in the social life of the capital. It may 
be seen at once, therefore, that entertaining can- 
not be xon a lavish or spectacular scale. 

The minister of foreign affairs and the im- 
perial minister of the interior receive salaries of 
36,000 marks, with 14,000 marks additional for 
expenses. The Prussian ministers have the same. 
Other ministers receive 30,000 marks and 14,000 
additional for expenses. The chancellor of the em- 
pire receives 36,000 marks and 64,000 additional 
for expenses. The highest receivable pension is 
three- fourths of the salary — not counting the ad- 
ditional sum for expenses, or, as it is named Re- 
prdsentationsaufwand — after forty years of ser- 
vice. The foreign ambassadors to the more ex- 
pensive capitals, London, Paris, Washington, Saint 
Petersburg, receive 150,000 marks a year. Where 
one has seen something of the innumerable demands 

222 



BERLIN 

upon the income of a foreign ambassador, one is 
the more amazed that a great democracy like ours 
should so restrict the salaries of its representatives 
abroad that only rich men dare undertake the duty. 
What could be more undemocratic ! 

Germany is a rich, very rich, country in the 
sense that it has the most intelligent, hardest-work- 
ing, most fiercely economical, and the most ra- 
tionally and most easily contented population of 
any of the great powers. But Germany is not rich 
in surplus and liquid capital as compared with En- 
gland, France, or America. It is the more to her 
credit that her capital is all hard at work. There is 
just so much less for luxury. The people in the 
streets; the shop-windows; the scale of charges at 
places of public resort and amusement; the very 
small number of well-turned-out private vehicles; 
the comparatively few people who live in houses and 
not in apartments; the simplicity of the gowns of 
the women, and their inexpensive jewelry and other 
ornaments; the fewer servants; the salaries and 
wages of all classes, point decisively to plain liv- 
ing on the part of practically everbody. Let me 
say very emphatically, however, that this economy 
means no lack of generosity. I doubt if there are 
people anywhere so restricted as to means, and so 
delightfully hospitable at the same time. Berlin is 
not as yet under that cloud that covers the new, 
uncultivated, and rich society in America, that 
tyranny of money which makes men and women 
fearful of being without it. Such people shiver at 
the bare thought of losing what money will buy, 

223 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

for the shameful reason that then there would be 
nothing left to them; and they are driven, many of 
them, both in London and in New York, to any 
humiliation, often to any degradation, to avoid it. 
They grossly overrate the value of money, and 
they exaggerate the terrors of being without it. 

Professor William James, who succeeded in 
analyzing what is at the back of men's brains as 
well as anybody, writes : " We have grown liter- 
ally afraid to be poor. We despise any one who 
elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his 
inner life. We have lost the power of even im- 
agining what the ancient idealization of poverty 
could have meant: the liberation from material at- 
tachments, the unbribed soul, the manlier indiffer- 
ence, the paying our way by what we are or do, and 
not by what we have, the right to fling away our 
life at any moment irresponsibly — the more athletic 
trim, in short, the moral fighting shape. ... It is 
certain that the prevalent fear of poverty among 
the educated classes is the worst moral disease from 
which our civilization suffers/' They suffer from 
this malady less in Germany than in America or in 
England. I should like to introduce such people into 
dozens of households in Berlin; alas, they could not 
speak or understand the moral or mental language 
there, where there is everything that makes a home's 
heart beat proudly and peaceably, except money. 
" La prosperity decouvre les vices, et l'adversite les 
vertus." 

These people need no tribute from me, and for 
their hospitality and friendliness I can make no 

224 



BERLIN 

adequate return. I sigh to think that we in America 
know so little of them. Germany would not be 
where she is without them ; and I offer them as an 
example to my countrymen, and to my country- 
women especially, as showing what self-sacrifice and 
simplicity, and loyal service can do for a nation in 
times of stress; and what high ideals and sturdy 
independence and contempt for luxury can do in 
the dangerous days of prosperity. Unadvertised, 
unheralded, keeping without murmuring or envy to 
their own traditions, they are here, as everywhere, 
the saviors of the world. 

In this great city of Berlin it may seem that I 
have over-emphasized their part in the drama of 
the city's life. Not so ! They are the backbone of 
the municipal as of the national body corporate. 
It is no easy industrial progress, no increasing wealth 
and population, no military prowess, no isolated 
great leader that makes a nation or a city. It is the 
men and women giving the high and unpurchasable 
gift of service to the state; giving the fine exam- 
ple of self-sacrificing and simple living; giving the 
prowess won by years of hard mental and moral 
training; giving the gentle courtesy and kindly wel- 
come of the patrician to the stranger, who lift a 
nation or a city to a worthy place in the world. 
Seek not for Germany's strength first in her fleet, 
her army, her hordes of workers, nay, not even in 
her philosophers, teachers, and musicians, though 
they glisten in the eyes of all the world, for you 
will not find it there. It is in these quiet and simple 
homes, that so few Americans and Englishmen ever 

225 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

enter, that you will find the sweetness and the stern- 
ness, the indomitable pride of service, and the self- 
sacrificing loyalty that won, and that keep for Ger- 
many her place in the world. 



226 



VI 
" A LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS " 

IT can hardly be doubted that could Lord Pal- 
merston have seen what I have seen of the 
changes in Germany, he would at least have 
placed the " damned/' in another part of his famous 
sentence. These professors have turned their prow- 
ess into channels which have given Germany, in 
this scientific industrial age, a mighty grip upon 
something more than theories. It may be dull read- 
ing to tell the tale of damned professordom, but 
it is to Germany that we must all go to school in 
these matters. 

The American chooses his university or college 
because it is in the neighborhood; because his fa- 
ther or other relatives went there ; because his school 
friends are going there; on account of the prestige 
of the place; sometimes, too, because one is con- 
sidered more democratic than another; sometimes, 
and perhaps more often than we think, on account 
of the athletics; because it is large or small; or on 
account of the cost. 

The German youth, owing to widely different cus- 
toms and ideals, chooses his university for other 
reasons. If he be of the well-to-do classes, and his 
father before him was a corps student, he is likely 

227 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

to go first to the university, where his father's corps 
will receive him and discipline him in the ways of a 
corps student's life, and rigorous ways they are, as 
we shall see. Young men of small means, and who 
can afford to waste little time in the amusements of 
university life, go at once where the more celebrated 
professors in their particular line of work are lec- 
turing. 

Few students in Germany reside during their 
whole course of study at one university. The 
student year is divided into two so-called semesters. 
The student remains, say, in Heidelberg two years 
or perhaps less, and then moves on, let us say, to 
Berlin, or Gottingen, or Leipsic, or Kiel, to hear 
lectures by other professors, and to get and to see 
something of the best work in law, theology, medi- 
cine, history, or belles-lettres, along the lines of his 
chosen work. 

One can hardly say too much in praise of his sys- 
tem. Many a medical, or law, or theological, or 
philosophical student, or one who is going in for a 
scientific course in engineering or mining, would 
profit enormously could he go from Harvard to 
Yale, or to Johns Hopkins, or to Princeton, or to 
Columbia, and attend the lectures of the best men at 
these and other universities. Many a man would 
have gone eagerly to Harvard to hear James in phi- 
losophy, Pierce in mathematics, Abbot in exegesis, 
or to read Greek with Palmer; or to Yale to have 
heard Whitney in philology in my day; or now, to 
name but a few, Van Dyke at Princeton, Sloane at 
Columbia, Wheeler at the University of California, 

228 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 

Paul Shorey at Chicago, and many others are men 
whom not to know and to hear in one's student days 
is a loss. 

The German student is at a distinct advantage in 
this privilege of hearing the best men at whatever 
university they may be. The number of students, 
indeed, at particular German universities rises and 
falls in a large measure according to the fame 
and ability of the professors who may be lecturing 
there. One can readily imagine how such men as 
Hegel, or Ranke, or Mommsen, who lectured at 
Berlin; or Liebig or Dollinger, at Munich; or 
Ewald, at Gottingen ; or Sybel, at Bonn ; or Leibnitz 
or Schlegel, in their day, or Kuno Fischer, in my 
day, at Heidelberg, must have drawn students from 
all parts of Germany; just as do Harnack, and 
Schmidt, and Lamprecht, and Adolph Wagner, 
Schmoller, or Gierke, or Schiemann, or Wach, 
Haechel, List, Deitsch, Hering, or Verworm, in 
these days. Though the German professors are 
somewhat hampered by the fact that they are ser- 
vants of the state, and their opinions therefore 
on theological, political, and economic matters re- 
stricted to the state's views, they are free as no other 
teachers in the world to exploit their intellectual 
prowess for the benefit of their purses. Each 
student pays each professor whose lectures he at- 
tends, and as a result there are certain professors in 
Germany whose incomes are as high as $50,000 a 
year. 

Even in intellectual matters state control pro- 
duces the inevitable state laziness and indifference. 

229 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

One could tell many a tale of professors who arrive 
late at their lecture-rooms, who read slowly, who 
give just as little matter as they can, in order to 
make their prepared work go as far as possible. 
Some of them, too, read the same lectures over and 
over again, year after year, quite content that they 
have made a reputation, gained a fixed tenure of 
their positions, and are sure of a pension. 

There are twenty-one universities in Germany, 
with another already provided for this year in 
Frankfort, and practically the equivalent of a uni- 
versity in Hamburg. The total number of students is 
66,358, an increase since 1895 °f Z7>79 1 - Geograph- 
ically speaking, one has the choice between Kiel, 
Konigsberg, and Berlin in the north, Munich in the 
south, Strassburg on the boundaries of France, or 
Breslau in Silesia. At the present writing Berlin 
has 9,686 students, and some 5,000 more authorized 
to attend lectures, over half of them grouped under 
the general heading " Philosophy " ; next comes Mu- 
nich with 7,000, nearly 5,000 of them grouped, un- 
der the headings " Jurisprudence " and " Philoso- 
phy"; then Leipsic with 5,000; then Bonn with 
4,000; and last in point of numbers Rostock with 
800 students. There are now some 1,500 women 
students at the German universities, but a total of 
4,500 who attend lectures, and Doctor Marie Linden 
at the beginning of 191 1 was appointed one of the 
professors of the medical faculty at Bonn, but 
the appointment was vetoed by the Prussian min- 
istry. 

In addition to the universities is the modern de- 

230 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 

velopment of the technical high-schools, of which 
there are now eleven, one each in Berlin, Dresden, 
Braunschweig, Darmstadt, Hanover, Karlsruhe, Mu- 
nich, Stuttgart, Danzig, Aix, and Breslau. These 
schools have faculties of architecture , building con- 
struction, mechanical engineering, chemistry, and 
general science, including mathematics and natural 
science. They confer the degree of Doctor of En- 
gineering, and admit those students holding the cer- 
tificate of the Gymnasium, Realgymnasium, and 
Oberrealschule. They rank now with the universi- 
ties, and their 17,000 students may fairly be added 
to the grand total number of German students, mak- 
ing 83,000 in all, and if to this be added the 4,000 
unmatriculated students, we have 87,000. 

While the population of Germany has increased 
1 .4 per cent, in the last year, the number of students 
has increased 4.6 per cent, and of the total number 
4.4 per cent, are women. Since the founding of the 
empire the population has increased from 40,000,000 
to 65,000,000, but the number of students has in- 
creased from 18,000 to 60,000. The teaching staffs 
in the universities number 3,400, and in the techni- 
cal high-schools 753, or, roughly, there are, in the 
higher-education department of Germany, nearly 
90,000 persons engaged ; as these figures do not in- 
clude officials and many unattached teachers and 
students indirectly connected with the universities. 
There are in addition agricultural high-schools, agri- 
cultural institutes, and technical schools such as 
veterinary high-schools, schools of mining, forestry, 
architecture and building, commercial schools, schools 

231 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

of art and industry; a naval school at Kiel; a 
colonial institute at Hamburg, with sixty professors 
and tutors, where men are trained for colonial 
careers, and which serves also the purpose of dis- 
tributing information of all kinds regarding the 
colonies ; there are 400 schools which prepare for a 
business career, with 50,000 pupils, and the Social- 
ists in Berlin maintain an academy for the instruc- 
tion of their paid secretaries and organizers in the 
rudiments and controversial points of socialism, 
military academies at Berlin and Munich, besides 
some 50 schools of navigation, and 20 military and 
cadet institutions. There are also courses of lec- 
tures, given under the auspices of the German 
foreign office, to instruct candidates for the consular 
service in the commercial and industrial affairs of 
Germany. 

At several of the universities evening extension 
lectures are given, an innovation first tried at Leip- 
sic, where more than seven thousand persons paid 
small fees to attend the lectures in a recent year. 

If one considers the range of instruction 
from the Volksschulen and Fortbildungsschulen up 
through the skeleton list I have mentioned to the uni- 
versities, and then on beyond that to the thousands 
still engaged as students in the commerce and indus- 
try of Germany, as, for example, the technically em- 
ployed men in the Krupp Works at Essen, or the 
Color Works at Elberfeld, to mention two of hun- 
dreds, it is seen that Germany is gone over with a 
veritable fine-tooth comb of education. There is 
not only nothing like it, there is nothing comparable 

232 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 

to it in the world. If training the minds of a popu- 
lation were the solution of the problems of civiliza- 
tion, they are on the way to such solution in Ger- 
many. Unfortunately there is no such easy way 
out of our troubles for Germany or for any other 
nation. Some of us will live to see this fetich of 
regimental instruction of everybody disappear as 
astrology has disappeared. There is a Japanese 
proverb which runs, " The bottom of light-houses is 
very dark." 

As early as 1 717 Frederick William I in an edict 
commanded parents to send their children to school, 
daily in summer, twice a week in winter. Frederick 
the Great at the close of the Seven Years' War, 
1764, insisted again upon compulsory school atten- 
dance, and prescribed books, studies, and discipline. 
At the beginning of the nineteenth century began a 
great change in the primary schools due to the influ- 
ence of Pestalozzi, and in the secondary schools 
owing to the efforts of Herder, Frederic August 
Wolf, William Humboldt, and Siinern. Humboldt 
was the Prussian minister of education for sixteen 
months. In 1809 he sent a memorial to the King, 
urging the establishment and endowment of a uni- 
versity in Berlin. He used his authority and his 
great influence to further higher and secondary edu- 
cation, and fixed the main lines of action which 
were followed for a century. He hoped that a lib- 
eral education of his countrymen would make for 
both an intellectual and moral regeneration, and 
emancipate the people from their sluggish obedience 
to conventionality. The schools then were part of 

233 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

the ecclesiastical organization and have never ceased 
to be so wholly, and until recently the title of the 
Prussian minister has been : " Minister of Ecclesi- 
astical Affairs, Instruction, and Medical Affairs." 
That part of the minister's title, " Medical Affairs/' 
has within the last few months been eliminated. 

The French Revolution, and the dismemberment 
of Prussia at Tilsit, put a stop to orderly progress. 
Stein and his colleagues, however, started anew; 
students were sent to Switzerland to study peda- 
gogical methods; provincial school-boards were es- 
tablished, and about 1850 all public-school teachers 
were declared to be civil servants; and later, in 1872, 
during Bismarck's campaign against the Jesuits, all 
private schools were made subject to state inspection. 
In Prussia to-day no man or woman may give in- 
struction even as a governess or private tutor, with- 
out the certificate of the state. 

This control of education and teaching by a cen- 
tral authority is an unmixed blessing. In Prussia, 
at any rate, the officials are hard-working, conscien- 
tious, and enthusiastic, and the system, whether one 
gives one's full allegiance to it or not, is admirably 
worked out. Above all, it completely does away 
with sham physicians, sham doctors of divinity, 
sham engineers, and mining and chemical experts, 
sham dentists and veterinary surgeons, who abound 
in our country, where shoddy schools do a business 
of selling degrees and certificates of proficiency in 
everything from exegesis to obstetrics. These fakir 
academies are not only a disgrace but a danger in 
America, and here, as in other matters, Germany 

234 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 

has a right to smile grimly at certain of our hobble- 
dehoy methods of government. 

The elementary schools, or V olkschnlen, are free, 
and attendance is compulsory from six to fourteen; 
in addition, the F ortbildungsschulen, or continuation 
schools, can also be made compulsory up to eighteen 
years of age. There are some 61,000 free public 
elementary schools with over 10,000,000 pupils, and 
over 600 private elementary schools with 42,000 
pupils who pay fees. 

Under a regulation of the Department of Trade 
and Industry, towns with more than twenty thou- 
sand inhabitants are empowered to make their own 
rules compelling commercial employees under eight- 
een to attend the continuation schools a certain 
number of hours monthly, and fining employers who 
interfere with such attendance. It has even been 
suggested that this law be extended to include 
girls. 

In Berlin this has already been put into opera- 
tion, and this year some 30,000 girls will be com- 
pelled to attend continuation schools, where they 
will be taught cooking, dress-making, laundry work, 
house-keeping economy, and for those who wish it, 
office work. It will require some training even to 
pronounce the name of this new institution, which 
requires something more than the number of letters 
in the alphabet to spell it, for it has this terrifying 
title : Madchenpflichtfortbildungsschule. 

The work in these Pflichtfortbildungsschulen, or 
compulsory continuation schools, is practical and 
thorough. The boys are from fourteen to eighteen 

^35 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

years of age, and are obliged to attend three hours 
twice a week. Shopkeepers and others, employing 
lads coming under the provisions of the law, are 
obliged by threat of heavy fines to send them. The 
boys pay nothing. There are some 34,000 of such 
pupils under one jurisdiction in Berlin, and the cost 
to the city is $300,000 annually. The curricu- 
lum includes letter-writing, book-keeping, exchange, 
bank-credits, checks and bills, the duty of the busi- 
ness man to his home, to the city, and to his fellow 
business men, his legal rights and duties, and, in 
great detail, all questions of citizenship. Methods 
of the banks, stock exchange, and insurance com- 
panies are explained. The business man's relations 
in detail to the post-office, the railways, the customs, 
canals, shipping agencies are dealt with. The in- 
vestigation of credits and the general management 
from cellar to attic of what we call a " store " are 
taught, and lectures are given upon business ethics 
and family relations and morals. 

In towns where factories are more common than 
shops there are schools similar in kind, as at Dort- 
mund, for example, where you may begin with 
horse-shoeing in the cellar, and go up through the 
work of carpenter, mason, plumber, sign-painter, 
poster-designer, to the designing of stained-glass 
windows and the modelling of animals and men. 

In the strictly agricultural districts of Prussia 
the number of courses open to those who work upon 
the land has steadily increased. In 1882 there were 
559 courses of instruction and 9,228 pupils; in 
1902, 1,421 such courses and 20,666 pupils; and in 

236 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 

1908, 3>?8i courses and 55,889 pupils. About five 
per cent, of the cost of such instruction, which cost 
the state 566,599 marks in 1908, is paid by the 
fees of the pupils themselves. 

To those interested in ways and means it may 
serve a purpose to say that the total cost of these 
elementary schools amounts to $130,715,250 a year, 
of which the various state governments pay $37,- 
500,000 and local authorities the rest. In 19 10 the 
city of Berlin spent $9,881,987 on its schools. The 
average cost per pupil is $13.50. In some of the 
towns of different classes of population that I have 
visited the number of pupils per 100 inhabitants 
stands as follows: Berlin, 11.1; Essen, 16.5; Dort- 
mund, 16; Diisseldorf, 13.2; Charlottenburg, 9; 
Duisburg, 16.7; Oberhausen, 17.7; Bielefeld, 14.7; 
Bonn, 11. 1.; Cologne, 13. 1. 

There are 170,000 teachers in these elementary 
schools, of whom 30,000 are women. They begin 
with $250 a year, which is raised to $300 when they 
are given a fixed position. By a graduated scale 
of increase a teacher at the age of forty-eight (when 
he may retire) may receive a maximum of $725. A 
woman teacher's salary would vary from $300 to 
$600 as the maximum. These figures are for Prus- 
sia. In other states of the empire, in Bavaria and 
Saxony, for example, the scale of salaries is some- 
what higher. 

The secondary schools are the well-known Gym- 
nasien and Progymnasien, the Realgymnasien, and 
the Realschulen. Roughly the Gymnasien prepare 
for the universities, and the Realschulen for the 

237 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

technical schools. Admission to the universities and 
to any form of employment under the civil service 
demands a certificate from one or another of these 
secondary schools. 

In 1890, two years after the present Emperor 
came to the throne, he called together a conference 
of teachers and in an able speech suggested that 
these secondary schools devote more time and at- 
tention to technical training. As a result of this, 
the certificates of the Realgymnasien and Realschu- 
len are now reecived as equivalent to those con- 
ferred by the Gymnasien, where Latin and Greek 
are, as they were then, still paramount. 

Of these secondary schools some are state schools ; 
others are municipal or trade-supported schools; 
some are private institutions; but all are amenable 
to the rules, organization, and curricula approved by 
the state. All secondary and elementary teachers 
must meet the examinational requirements of the 
state, which fixes a minimum salary and contributes 
thereto. In the universities and technical high- 
schools all professors are appointed by the state, and 
largely paid by the state as well. In the year 19 10 
the German Empire expended under the general 
heading of elementary instruction $130,715,250. 
Prussia alone spent $60,424,325; Bavaria, $8,955,- 
825 (though nearly $750,000 of this total went for 
building and repairs for both churches and schools) ; 
Baden, $4,176,075; Saxony, $4,573,250; the free 
city of Hamburg, $5,561,900. The total expendi- 
tures of the empire and of the states of the empire 
combined in 1910 amounted to $2,225,225,000; of 

238 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 

this, as we have seen, more than $130,000,000 went 
for instruction and allied uses ; $198,748,775 was the 
cost of the army; and $82,362,650 the cost of the 
navy, not counting the extraordinary expenditures 
for these two arms of the service, which amounted 
to $5,624,775 for the army, and $28,183,125 for the 
navy. The total expenditure of the Fatherland for 
schools, army, and navy amounted, therefore, to 
one-fifth of the total, or $416,108,225. 

I have grouped these expenditures together for 
the reason, that I am still one of those who remain 
distrustful and disdainful of the Carnegie holy 
water, and a firm believer that the two best schools 
in Germany, or anywhere else where they are as 
well conducted as there, are the army and the navy. 
Even if they were not schools of war, they would be 
an inestimable loss to the country were they no 
longer in existence as manhood-training schools. 
This is the more clear when it is remembered that, 
according to the army standard, both the German 
peasant and the urban dweller are steadily deterio- 
rating. In ten years the percentage of physically 
efficient men in the rural districts decreased from 
60.5 to 58.2 per cent., and this decrease is even 
more marked in particular provinces. Infant mor- 
tality, despite better hygienic conditions and more 
education, has not decreased, and in some districts 
has increased; while the birth-rate, especially in 
Prussia and Thuringia, has fallen off as well. For 
the whole of Germany, the births to every thousand 
of the inhabitants were, in 1876, 42.63; in 1891, 
38.25; in 1905, 34, and in 1909, 31.91. In Berlin 

239 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

the births per thousand in 1907 were 24.63 and in 
191 1 only 20.84. 

The observer who cares nothing for statistics, 
who rambles about in the district of Leipsic, Chem- 
nitz, Riesa, Oschatz, and in the mountainous district 
of southeast Saxony, may see for himself a pop- 
ulation lacking in size, vigor, and health, noticeably 
so indeed. Education at one end turning out an 
unwholesome, " white-collared, black-coated pro- 
letariat," as the Socialists call them; and industry 
and commerce, which even tempt the farmer to sell 
what he should keep to eat, at the other, are mak- 
ing serious inroads upon the health and well-being 
of the population. 

The Chancellor, von Bethmann-Hollweg, speak- 
ing in the Reichstag February 11, 191 1, said: u The 
fear that we may not be working along the right 
lines in the education of our youth is a cause of 
great anxiety to many people in Germany. We shall 
not solve this problem by shunning it ! " 

Many social economists hold that higher educa- 
tion is unfitting numbers of young men from follow- 
ing the humbler pursuits, while at the same time it 
is not making them as efficient as are their am- 
bitions; and such men are recognized as the most 
potent chemical in making the milk of human kind- 
ness to turn sour. At a meeting of the Goethebund 
this year, advocating school reform, it was evident 
that many intelligent men in Germany were not satis- 
fied with present methods of education, which were 
characterized as wasting energy in mechanical meth- 
ods of teaching, and so robbing youth of its youth. 

240 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 

It is beginning to be understood in Germany, as it 
has been understood by wise men in all ages, that 
" to spend too much time in studies is sloth ; to use 
them too much for ornament is affectation ; to make 
judgment wholly by their rules is the humour of the 
scholar." This commentary of Bacon should be on 
the walls of every school and university in Germany. 
An education can do nothing more for a man than 
to make him less fearful of what he does not know 
and to save him from the vulgarity of being pre- 
empted wholly by the present, because he knows 
something of the past. You cannot educate a man 
to be a poet or a preacher or a pianist; that we 
know. We are only just discovering that the much- 
lauded technical education will not make him an en- 
gineer or a ship-builder or an architect. You may 
give him the tools and the elementary rules, but the 
rest he must do himself. Nine-tenths of the techni- 
cally educated men to-day are working for men who 
were liberally educated, or who educated themselves. 
Germany is producing a race of first-rate clerks and 
skilled mechanics, who are working hard to enrich 
the Jews. 

In America, it is true, we have gone ahead along 
educational lines. In 1800, it is said, the average 
adult American had 82 days of school attendance; 
in 1900, 146 days. In the last quarter of a century 
our secondary schools have increased in number 
from 1,400 to 12,000; and during the last eighteen 
years the proportion of our youth receiving high- 
school instruction has doubled, and attendance at 
American colleges has increased 400 per cent, while 

241 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

the population increased by ioo per cent. But ed- 
ucation is by no means so strenuous as in Germany. 
The hours are shorter, holidays longer, standards 
lower, and the emphasis far less insistent. A boy 
who has not the mental energy to pass the entrance 
examinations at Harvard, for instance, and proceed 
to a degree there, ought to be drowned, or to drown 
himself. I would not say as much of the require- 
ments in Germany, for they are far more severe. 
Prince von Hohenlohe in his memoirs gives an ac- 
count of a conversation between the Emperor, the 
Emperor's tutor, and himself. The Emperor was 
regretting the severity of the examinations in the 
secondary schools, and it was replied to him that 
this was the only way to prevent a flood of candi- 
dates for the civil service ! 

There is another all-important factor in Ger- 
many bearing upon this point. A boy must have 
passed into the upper section of the class before the 
last, " Secunda" as it is called, or have passed an 
equivalent examination, in order to serve one year 
instead of three in the army. To be an Einjdhriger 
is, therefore, in a way the mark of an educated gen- 
tleman. The tales of suicide and despair of school- 
boys in Germany are, alas, too many of them true ; 
and it is to be remembered that not to reach a certain 
standard here means that a man's way is barred 
from the army and navy, civil service, diplomatic 
or consular service, from social life, in short. The 
uneducated man of position in Germany does not 
exist, cannot exist. This is, therefore, no phantom, 
but a real terror. The man of twenty-five who has 

242 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 

not won an education and a degree faces a blank 
wall barring his entrance anywhere ; and even when, 
weaponed with the necessary academic passport, he 
is permitted to enter, he meets with an appalling 
competition, which has peopled Germany with ed- 
ucated inefficients who must work for next to noth- 
ing, and who keep down the level of the earnings 
of the rest because there is an army of candidates 
for every vacant position. On the other hand, the 
industries of Germany have bounded ahead, because 
the army of chemists and physicists of patience, 
training, and ability, who work for small salaries 
provide them with new and better weapons than 
their rivals. 

There are two sides to this question of fine- 
tooth-comb education. Its advantages both America 
and England are seeing every day in these stout 
rivals of ours; but its disadvantages are not to be 
concealed, and are perhaps doing an undermining 
work that will be more apparent in the future than 
now it is. The very fact that an alien, an oriental 
race, the Jews, have taken so disproportionate a 
share of the cream of German prosperity, and have 
turned this technical prowess to purposes of their 
own, is, in and of itself, a sure sign that there may 
be an educated proletariat working slavishly for 
masters whom, with all their learning and all their 
mental discipline, they cannot force to abdicate. 

Strange to say, the federal constitution of 1871, 
which gave Germany its emperor, did not include 
the schools, and each state has its own school sys- 
tem, but in 1875 an imperial school commission was 

243 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

formed which has done much to make the system of 
all the states uniform. 

The three classes of schools recognized as lead- 
ing later to a university career are the Gymnasium, 
in which Latin and Greek are still the fundamental 
requirements; the Realgymnasium, in which Latin 
but no Greek is required; the Oberrealschule, in 
which the classics are not taught at all, but emphasis 
is laid upon modern languages and natural science. 
In addition to these there are the so-called Reform- 
schulen, of very recent growth, which are an at- 
tempt to put less emphasis upon the classics, but 
without excluding them entirely from the course, 
and to pay more attention proportionately to modern 
languages, French in particular. There are in addi- 
tion some four hundred public and one thousand or 
more private higher girls' schools, with an atten- 
dance of a quarter of a million, all subject to state 
supervision. 

If one were to make a genealogical tree of the 
German schools which educate the children from the 
age of six up to the age of entrance to the univer- 
sity, it might be described as follows: First are the 
Volkschulen, which every child must attend from 
six to fourteen. In the smaller country schools the 
children of all ages may be in one school-room and 
under one teacher; in another, divided into two 
classes; in another, into three or four classes; up to 
the large city schools, in which they are divided on 
account of their number into as many as eight 
classes. Next would come the Mittelschulen, where 
the pupils are carried on a year farther, and where 

244 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 

the last year corresponds to the first year of the so- 
called Lehrerbildungsanstalten, or training schools 
for teachers. These again are divided into two, one 
called Prceparanda, the other Seminar, the former 
carrying the pupil on to his sixteenth year, the latter 
to the nineteenth year and turning him out a full- 
fledged Volkschule teacher, and giving him the right 
to serve only one year in the army. 

If boy or girl goes on from the fourteenth year, 
the hohere Knabenschitlen and the hohere Madchen- 
schulen take them on to the eighteenth or nineteenth 
year. Many boys go on till they have passed from 
the lower Secunda, next to the last class, which is 
divided into upper and lower Secunda, into the up- 
per Secunda, when their certificate entitles them to 
serve one year only in the army, when they quit 
school. Many boys, too, intending to become offi- 
cers, leave school at sixteen or seventeen and go to 
regular cramming institutions, where they do their 
work more quickly and devote themselves to the 
special subjects required. For boys intending to go 
on through the higher schools, there are schools 
taking them on from the age of nine, with a curric- 
ulum better adapted than that of the Volkschulen 
to that end. 

In all these higher schools there is less attention 
paid to mere examinations, and more attention paid 
to the general grip the pupils have on the work in 
hand; and of the teaching, as mentioned elsewhere, 
too much cannot be said in its praise. 

For those boys who finish their public schooling 
at the age of fourteen and then turn to earning their 

245 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

living, there are the continuation schools, which are 
in many parts of the country compulsory, and which 
are nicely adapted, according to their situation in 
shopkeeping cities, in factory towns, or in the coun- 
try, to give the pupils the drilling and instruction 
necessary for their particular employment. The 
average amount of expenditure for these continu- 
ation schools is $6,250,000. In Prussia there are 
some 1,500 of these schools, with an average at- 
tendance of 300,000 pupils. 

According to the last census the proportion of 
illiterates among the recruits for the army was 0.02 
per cent. The number of those who could neither 
read nor write in Germany was, in 1836, 41.44 per 
cent.; in 1909, 0.0 1 per cent. If one were to name 
all the agricultural schools ; technical schools ; schools 
of architecture and building; commercial schools, 
for textile, wood, metal, and ceramic industries ; art 
schools ; schools for naval architecture and engineer- 
ing and navigation ; and the public music schools, it 
would be seen that it is no exaggeration to speak of 
fine-tooth-comb education. 

I have visited scores of all sorts of schools all 
over Germany, from a peasant common school in 
Posen up to that last touch in education, the schools 
in Charlottenburg, the Schulpforta Academy, and 
such a private boys' school as Die Schulerheim-Ko- 
lonie des Arndt-Gymnasiums in the Grunewald near 
Berlin, and the training schools for the military ca- 
dets. Through the courtesy of the authorities I was 
permitted, when I wished it, to sit in the class-rooms, 
and even to put questions to the boys and girls in 

246 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 

the classes. From the small boys and girls making 
their first efforts at spelling to the young woman of 
seventeen who translated a paragraph of the " Ger- 
mania " of Tacitus, not into German but into French, 
for me (a problem I offered as a good test of 
whether I was merely assisting at a prepared exhibi- 
tion of the prowess of the class or whether the 
minds had been trained to independence), I have 
looked over a wide field of teaching and learning in 
Germany. If that young person was typical of the 
pupils of this upper girls' school, there is no doubt 
of their ability to meet an intellectual emergency of 
that kind. 

Of one feature of German education one can write 
without reservation, and that is the teaching. Every- 
where it is good, often superlatively good, and half 
a dozen times I have listened to the teaching of a 
class in history, in Latin, in German literature, in 
French literature, where it was a treat to be a lis- 
tener. I remember in particular a class in physical 
geography, another reading Ovid, another reading 
Shakespeare, and another reading Goethe's " Her- 
mann and Dorothea," where I enjoyed my half- 
hour, as though I had been listening to a distin- 
guished lecturer on his darling subject. 

We know how little these men and women teach- 
ers are paid, but there is such a flood of intellec- 
tual output in Germany that the competition is fe- 
rocious in these callings, and the schools can pick 
and choose only from those who have borne the 
severest tests with the greatest success. The teach- 
ing is so good that it explains in part the amount 

247 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

of work these poor children are enabled to get 
through. School begins at seven in summer, at 
eight in winter. The course for those intending 
to go to the university is nine years; the recitation 
hours alone range from twenty-five to thirty-two 
hours a wxek; to which must be added two hours a 
week of singing and three hours a week of gymnas- 
tics, and this for forty-two weeks in the year. The 
preparation for class-work requires from two and 
a half to four hours more. It foots up to something 
like fifty hours a week! 

At Eton, in England, the boys grumble because 
they only have a half -holiday every other day, and 
four months of the year vacation. It will be inter- 
esting to see which educational method is to produce 
the men who are to win the next Waterloo. No 
wonder that nearly seventy per cent, of those who 
reach the standard required of those who need serve 
only one year instead of three in the army are near- 
sighted, and that more than forty-five per cent, are 
put on one side as physically unfit. The increase 
in population in Germany is so great, however, and 
the candidates for the army so numerous, that the 
authorities are far more strict in those they accept 
than in France, for example. There is more man- 
hood material for the German army and navy every 
year than is needed. 

In the first year of the nine-years' course in a 
Gymnasium the 25 hours a week are divided: re- 
ligion, 3 hours; German, 4 hours; Latin, 8 hours; 
geography, 2 hours; mathematics, 4 hours; natural 
science, 2 hours ; writing, 2 hours. In the last year : 

248 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 

religion, 2 hours ; German, 3 hours ; Latin, 7 hours ; 
Greek, 6 hours — Greek is begun in the fourth year ; 
French, 3 hours — French is begun in the third year ; 
history, 3 hours; mathematics, 4 hours; natural 
science, 2 hours. 

In the first year in a Real gymnasium: religion, 
3 hours; German, 4 hours; Latin, 8 hours; geog- 
raphy, 2 hours; mathematics, 4 hours; natural 
science, 2 hours; writing, 2 hours. In the last year 
of the course: religion, 2 hours; Gentian, 3 hours; 
Latin, 4 hours; French — begun in third year — 4 
hours; English — begun in fourth year — 3 hours; 
mathematics, 5 hours; natural science, 5 hours; 
drawing, 2 hours. 

In the first year in an Oberrealschulc: religion, 
3 hours; German, 5 hours; French, 6 hours; geog- 
raphy, 2 hours; mathematics, 5 hours; natural 
science, 2 hours ; writing, 2 hours. In the last year : 
religion, 2 hours ; German, 4 hours ; French, 4 hours ; 
English: — begun in the fourth year — 4 hours; his- 
tory, 3 hours; geography, 1 hour; mathematics, 5 
hours; natural science, 6 hours; free-hand draw- 
ing — begun in the second year — 2 hours. 

It may be seen from these schedules where the 
emphasis is laid in each of these schools. So far 
as results are concerned, the pupils about to leave 
for the universities seemed to me to know their 
Latin, Greek, French, German, and English, and 
their local and European history well. Their knowl- 
edge of Latin and of either French or English, some- 
times of both, is far superior to anything required 
of a student entering any college or university 

249 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

in America. I have asked many pupils to read pas- 
sages at sight in Latin, French and English in 
schools in various parts of Germany and there is no 
question of the grip they have upon what they 
have been taught. I am, alas, not a scholar, and can 
only judge of the requirements and of the training 
and its results in subjects where I am at home; and 
I must take it for granted that these boys and girls 
are as well trained in other subjects where I am in- 
capable of passing judgment. It is improbable, 
however, that the same thoroughness does not char- 
acterize their work throughout the whole curricu- 
lum. The examination at the end of the secondary- 
school period, called Abiturientenexamen, is more 
thorough and covers a wider range than any similar 
examination in America. It is a test of intellectual 
maturity. It permits no gaps, covers a wide ground, 
leaves no subject dropped on the way, and sends a 
man or woman to the university, with an equipment 
entirely adequate for such special work as the in- 
dividual proposes to undertake. 

It seemed to me that in many class-rooms the 
ventilation was distinctly bad, but here too I must 
admit an exaggerated love for fresh air, born of 
my own love of out-door exercise. 

There are practically no schools in Germany like 
the public schools for boys in England, and our 
own private schools for boys, like Saint Paul's, Gro- 
ton, Saint Mark's, and others, where the training 
of character and physique are emphasized. Here 
again I admit my prejudice in favor of such ed- 
ucation. I should be made pulp, indeed, did I try 

250 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 

to run through the boys of a fifth or sixth form at 
home, but, from the look of them, I would have un- 
dertaken it for a wager in Germany. 

It is not their fault, poor boys. Practically 
the whole emphasis is laid upon drilling the mind. 
Moral and physical matters are left to the home, 
and in the home there are no fathers and brothers 
interested in games or sport, and in this busy, com- 
petitive strife, and with the small means at the dis- 
posal of the majority, there is no time and no op- 
portunity. Boys and girls seldom leave home for 
distant boarding-schools. They go from home to 
school and from school home every day, and have 
none of the advantages to be gained from inter- 
course with men outside their own circles. It shows 
itself in a deplorable lack of orientation as com- 
pared with our lads of the same relative standing. 
In dress and bearing, in at-homeness in the world, 
in ability to take care of themselves under strange 
conditions or in an emergency, and in domestic hy- 
giene they are inferior, and yet they are so com- 
petent to push the national military, industrial, and 
commercial ball along as men, that one wonders 
whether Bagehot's gibe at certain well-to-do classes 
of the Saxons, that " they spend half their time 
washing their whole persons/' may not have a grain 
of truth in it. 

Another feature of the school life which is prom- 
inent, especially in Prussia, is the incessant and in- 
sistent emphasis laid upon patriotism. In every 
school, almost in every class-room, is a picture of 
the Emperor; in many, pictures also of his father 

251 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

and grandfather. Even in a municipal lodging- 
house, where I found some tiny waifs and strays 
being taught, there were pictures of the sovereign, 
and brightly colored pictures of the war of 1870-71, 
generally with German personalities on horseback, 
and the French as prisoners with bandages and dis- 
hevelled clothing. This war, which began with the 
first movement of the German army on August 4, 
and on the 2d of September next Napoleon was a 
prisoner; this war, in which the German army at 
the beginning of operations consisted of 384,000 
officers and men and which had grown during the 
truce to 630,000 on March 1 ; lost in killed and those 
who died from wounds 28,278, of whom 1,871 were 
officers; this war is flaunted at the population of 
Germany continually, and from every possible angle. 
We hear very little of our war of 1861-1865, that 
cost us $8,000,000,000 with killed and wounded 
numbering some 700,000. We do not find it neces- 
sary to feed our patriotism with a nursing-bottle. 

At a kindergarten two tots, a boy and a girl, 
stood at the top of some steps while the rest marched 
by and saluted; they later descended and went 
through the motions of reviewing the others. They 
were playing they were Kaiser and Kaiserin ! 

Two small boys in a school-yard discussing their 
relative prowess as jumpers end the discussion when 
one says as a final word : " Oh, I can jump as high 
as the Kaiser ! " 

We have noted in another article how even police 
sergeants must be familiar with the history of the 
House of Hohenzollern. 

252 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 

I am an admirer of Germany and her Emperor, 
with a distinct love of discipline and a bias in favor 
of military training, and with an experience of 
actual warfare such as only a score or so of Ger- 
man officers of my generation have had ; but I am 
bound to say I found this pounding in of patriotism 
on every side distinctly nauseating. Boys and girls, 
and men and women, ought not to need to be pest- 
ered with patriotism. We had a controversy in 
America some ten years before the Franco-German 
War, where in one battle more men were killed and 
wounded than in all the battles Prussia, and later 
Germany, has fought since i860. 

In the South, at any rate, we bear the scars and 
the mourning of those days still, but nobody would 
be thanked for pummelling us with patriotism. In 
the ■ skirmish with Spain our military authorities 
were pestered with candidates for the front. Ger- 
many itself is not more a nation in arms than 
America would be at the smallest threat of insult or 
aggression. But we take those things for granted. 
If we have the honor to possess a medal or a decora- 
tion, the gentlemen among us wear it only when 
asked to do so, or perhaps on the Fourth of July. 

Germany is even now somewhat loosely cemented 
together. Their leaders may feel that it is neces- 
sary to keep ever in the minds even of the children, 
that Germany is a .nation with an Emperor and a 
victory over France, France in political rags and 
patches at the time, behind them. 

They even carry this teaching of patriotism be- 
yond the boundaries of Germany. The Allgemeiner 

253 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Deutscher Schulverein zur Erhaltung des DeuU 
schtums im Auslande, is a society with headquarters 
in Berlin devoting itself to the advancement of 
German education all over the world. The society 
was started privately in 1886, and is now partly 
supported by the state. It controls some sixteen 
hundred centres for the teaching of German and 
German patriotism, and German learning. There 
are such centres in China, South America, the 
United States, Spain, and elsewhere. They number 
90 in Europe, 25 in Asia, 20 in Africa, 70 in Brazil, 
40 in Argentina, and 100 in Australia and Canada. 
The society is instrumental in having German taught 
in 5,000 schools and academies in the United States 
to 600,000 pupils. The work is not advertised, 
rather it is concealed so far as possible, but it is 
looked upon as a valuable force for the advancement 
of German interests throughout the world. 

In the schools, too, there is an enemy of which 
we know nothing, and that is the active propa- 
gandism of socialism, which is anti-military, anti- 
monarchical, and anti-status quo. Leaflets and 
books and pamphlets are widely distributed among 
the school children; many of the teachers are in 
sympathy with these obstructionist methods; and 
the authorities may feel that they must do what they 
can to combat this teaching. In Prussia, on every 
side, and in the industrial towns of Saxony, one 
sees the evidence of this impotent discontent ex- 
pressing itself either openly or in surly malice of 
speech and manner. The streets of Berlin, and of 
the industrial towns, show this condition at every 

254 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 

turn, and when the Reichstag closes with cheers for 
the Emperor, the Socialist members leave in a body 
before that loyal ceremony takes place. 

We in America are brought up to believe that the 
best cure for such maladies is to open the wound, to 
give freedom of speech, to let every boy and girl 
and man and woman find out for himself his citi- 
zen's path to walk in. We have no policemen on our 
public platforms, no gags in the mouths of our pro- 
fessors or preachers, no lurid pictures of battles, 
no plastering of the walls of our schools and sem- 
inaries with pictures of our rulers, and withal our 
German immigrants are perhaps our best and most 
patriotic citizens. In America they think less and 
do more, and for most men this is the better way. 
It makes life very complicated to think too much 
about it. 

Self -consciousness is the prince of mental and 
social diseases, as vanity is the princess, and even 
self-conscious patriotism seems a little unwholesome, 
not quite manly, and often even grotesque. It is 
easy to say : " Die mihi si f ueris tu leo, qualis 
eris?" and if one is a person of no great impor- 
tance, it is an embarrassing question to answer. In 
this connection I can only say that I should assume 
that my lionhood was taken for granted without so 
much roaring, bristling of the mane, and switch- 
ing of the tail. It irritates those who are discon- 
tented, it positively infuriates the redder democrats, 
and it bores the children, and, worst of all, pro- 
claims to everybody that the lion is not quite com- 
fortable and at his ease. The German lion is a fine, 

^55 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

big fellow now, with fangs, and teeth, and claws as 
serviceable as need be, and it only makes him appear 
undignified to be forever looking at himself in the 
looking-glass. 

Whatever may be the right or wrong of these 
comparative methods of training, Germans trained 
in the investigation of such matters agree in telling 
me that the boys who come up to the universities, 
especially in the large cities and towns, are some- 
what lax in their moral standards as regards matters 
upon which the puritan still lays great stress. 

In Berlin particularly, where there are some 
thirty-five hundred registered and nearly fifty thou- 
sand unregistered women devoting themselves to 
the seemingly incompatible ends of rapidly accu- 
mulating gold while frantically pursuing pleasure, 
there is an amount of immorality unequalled in any 
capital in Europe. In the whole German Empire 
the average of illegitimacy is ten per cent, but in 
Berlin the average for the last few years is twenty 
per cent. Out of every five children born in Ber- 
lin each year one is illegitimate! It is questionable 
whether the increasing demands of the army and 
navy require such laxity of moral methods in pro- 
viding therefor. 

There is, however, a state church in Germany 
with its head in Berlin, and no doubt we may safely 
leave this matter in these better hands than ours. 
I beg to say that in mentioning this subject I am 
quoting unprejudiced scientific investigators, who, 
I may say, agree, without a dissenting voice of im- 
portance, that Berlin has become the classical prob- 

256 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 

lem along such lines. In the endeavor to compete 
with the gayeties elsewhere, a laxity has been en- 
couraged and permitted that has won for Berlin in 
the last ten years, an unrivalled position as a pur- 
veyor of after-dark pleasures. Berlin not only pro- 
duces a disproportionate number of such people as 
Diotrephes, in manners, but also a veritable horde 
of those who are like unto the son of Bosor. 

After the sheltered home life and the severe 
discipline of the higher schools, a German youth 
is permitted a freedom unknown to us at the uni- 
versity. There is no record kept of how or where 
he spends his time. He matriculates at one or an- 
other of the universities, and for three, four, or, in 
the case of medical students, five years, he is free 
to work or not to work, as he pleases. 

There are, however, three factors that serve as 
bit and reins to keep him in order. The final exam- 
ination is severe, thorough, and cannot be passed 
successfully by mere cramming; very few of the 
students have incomes which permit of a great range 
of dissipation; and not to pass the examination is 
a terrible defeat in life, which cuts a man off from 
further progress and leaves him disgraced. 

These are forces that count, and which prevail 
to keep all but the least serious within bounds. 
German life as a whole is so disciplined, so fitted 
together, so impossible to break into except through 
the recognized channels, that few men have the op- 
timistic elasticity of mind and spirits, the demonic 
confidence in themselves, that overrides such con- 
siderations. 

257 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

We in America suffer from a superabundance of 
men of aleatory dispositions, men who love to play 
cards with the devil, who rejoice to wager their 
future, their reputation, their lives, against the 
world. I admit a sneaking fondness for them. 
They are a great asset, and a new country needs 
them, but if we have too many, Germany has too 
few. They are forever crying out in Germany for 
another Bismarck. Whenever in political matters, in 
foreign affairs, even in their religious controversies, 
things go wrong, men lift their hands and eyes to 
heaven and say, " How different if Bismarck were 
here!" Bismarck and two of his predecessors as 
nation-builders were not afraid to throw dice with 
the world, and what " the land of damned profes- 
sors " could not do, they did. 

When the young men from the Gymnasium come 
into the freedom of university life, they toss their 
heads a bit, kick up their heels, laugh long and loud 
at the Philistine, but just as every German climax 
is incomplete without tears, so they too are soon 
singing: " Ich weiss nicht was soil es bedeuten dass 
ich so traurig bin! " the gloom of the Teutoburger 
Wald settles down on them, and they buckle to and 
work with an enduring patience such as few other 
men in the world display, and join the great army 
here who, bitted and harnessed, are pulling the 
Vaterland to the front. 

The British Empire between 1800 and 19 10 grew 
from 1,500,000 square miles to 11,450,000 square 
miles, and its trade from $400,000,000 to $11,020, 
000,000; not to mention the United States of 

258 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 

America, now considered to be of noticeable im- 
portance, though we are universally sneered at by 
the Germans, to an extent that no American dreams 
of who has not lived among them, as a land of 
dollars, and, from the point of view of book-learn- 
ing, dullards. But it is this, none the less, that Ger- 
many envies, and has set out to rival and if possible 
to surpass. No wonder the training must be severe 
for the athletes who propose to themselves such a 
task. 

For a semester or two, perhaps for three, the 
German student gives himself up to the rollicking 
freedom of the corps student's life. That life is so 
completely misunderstood by the foreigner that it 
deserves a few words of explanation. 

I am not yet old enough to envy youth, nor 
sourly sophisticated enough to deal sarcastically or 
even lightly with their worship and their creeds, 
that once I shared, and with which lately I have 
been, under the most hospitable circumstances, in- 
vited to renew my acquaintance at the Commers 
and the Mensur. 

One may be no longer a constant worshipper at 
the shrine of blue eyes, pink cheeks, flaxen hair, 
and the enshrouding mystery of skirts, which make 
for curiosity and reverence in youth ; one may have 
learned, however, the far m'ore valuable lesson that 
the best women are so much nobler than the best 
men, that the best men may still kneel to the best 
women; just as the worst women surpass the worst 
men in consciencelessness, brutal selfishness, disloy- 
alty, and degradation. The female bandit in society, 

259 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

or frankly on the war-path outside, takes her weap- 
ons from an armory of foulness and cruelty un- 
known to men; just as the heroines and angels 
among women fortify themselves in sanctuaries to 
which few, if any, men have the key. 

One returns, therefore, to the playground of 
one's youth with not less but with more sympa- 
thy and understanding. Far from being " brutaliz- 
ing guilds," far from being mere unions for swill- 
ing and slashing, the German corps, by their codes, 
and discipline, and standards of manners and honor, 
are, from the chivalrous point of view, the leaven 
of German student life. In these days many of 
them have club-houses of their own, where they 
take their meals in some cases and where they meet 
for their beer-drinking ceremonies. 

There is of course a wide range of expenditure 
by students at the German universities, whether 
they are members of the corps or not. At one of 
the smaller universities in a country town like 
Marburg, for example, a poor student, with a little 
tutoring and the system of frei Tisch — money 
left for the purpose of giving a free midday meal 
to poor students — may scrape along with an ex- 
penditure of as little as twenty dollars a month. 
A member of a good corps at this same university 
is well content with, and can do himself well on, 
seventy dollars a month. I have seen numbers of 
students' rooms, with bed, writing-table, and simple 
furniture, perhaps with a balcony where for many 
months in the year one may write and read, which 
rent for sixty dollars a year. One may say roughly 

260 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 

that at the universities outside the large towns, and 
not including the fashionable universities, such as 
Bonn or Heidelberg, the student gets on comfort- 
ably with fifty dollars a month. They have their 
coffee and rolls in the morning, their midday meal 
which they take together at a restaurant, and their 
supper of cold meats, preserves, cheese, and beer 
where they will. For seventy-five cents a day a 
student can feed himself. 

The hours are Aristotelian, for it was Aristotle 
in his " Economics," and not a nursery rhymer, 
who wrote : " It is likewise well to rise before day- 
break, for this contributes to health, wealth, and 
wisdom." " Early to bed and early to rise " is a 
classic. 

At Bonn, a member of one of the three more 
fashionable corps spends far more than these sums, 
and his habits may be less Spartan. The ridiculous 
expenditure of some of our mamma-bred under- 
graduates, who go to college primarily to cultivate 
social relations, are unknown anywhere in Ger- 
many, for a student would make himself unpopu- 
larly conspicuous by extravagance. Two to three 
thousand dollars a year, even at Bonn, as a member 
of the best corps, would be amply sufficient and is 
considered an extravagant expenditure. 

When the Earl of Essex was sent to Cambridge 
in Queen Elizabeth's time, he was provided with a 
deal table covered with baize, a truckle-bed, half a 
dozen chairs, and a washhand basin. The cost of 
all this was about $25. When students from all 
over Europe tramped to Paris to hear Abelard lec- 

261 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

ture, they begged their way. They were given 
special licenses as scholars to beg. Learning then, 
as it is still in Germany, alone of all the nations, 
was considered to be a pious profession deserving 
well of the world. We do not even know the names 
of our scholars in America. How many Amer- 
icans have heard of Gibbs, the authority on the 
fundamental laws regulating the trend of trans- 
formation in chemical and physical processes, or 
of Hill and his theory of the moon, or of Hale who 
explains the mystery of sun spots and measures the 
magnetic forces that play around the sun? How 
many Frenchmen know Pierron's translation of 
^Eschylus, or Patin's studies in Greek tragedies, or 
Charles Maguin, or Maurice Croiset, or Paul Magou 
or Leconte de Lisle? while in England the mass of 
the people not only do not know the names of their 
scholars, but distrust all mental processes that are 
supercanine. 

The origin of the Landsmannschafien, Bursch- 
enschaften, and the Corps among the students dates 
back to the days when the students aligned them- 
selves with more rigidity than now, according to 
the various German states from which they came. 
The names of the corps still bear this sugges- 
tion, though nowadays the alignment is rather 
social than geographical. The Burschenschaften 
societies of students had their origin in political 
opposition to this separation of the students into 
communities from the various states. The origina- 
tors of the Burschenschaften movement, for exam- 
ple, were eleven students at Jena. Sobriety and 

262 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 

chastity were conditions of entrance, and " Honor, 
Liberty, Fatherland " were their watchwords. It 
was deemed a point of honor that a member break- 
ing his vows should confess and retire from the 
society. 

The societies of the Burschenschaften are still 
considered to have a political complexion and the 
corps proper have no dealings with them. 

In any given semester the number of students in 
one of these corps varies from as few as ten, to as 
many as twenty-five, depending, much as do our 
Greek-letter societies and college clubs, upon the 
number of available men coming up to the univer- 
sity. Certain corps are composed almost exclusively 
of noblemen, but none is distinctly a rich man's 
club. 

An active member of a corps during his first 
two semesters may do a certain amount of serious 
work, but as a rule it is looked upon as a time " to 
loaf and invite one's soul," and little attempt is 
made to do more. Not a few men whom I have 
known, have not even entered a class-room during 
the two or three semesters of this blossoming period. 

I have spent many days and nights with 
these young gentlemen, at Heidelberg, at Leipsic, at 
Marburg, at Bonn, and been made one of them in 
their jollity and good-fellowship, and I have agreed, 
and still agree, that " Wir sind die Konige der Welt, 
wir sind's durch unsere Freude." 

They are by no means the swashbuckling, bully- 
ing, dissolute companions painted by those who 
know nothing about them. They may drink more 

263 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

beer than we deem necessary for health, or even for 
comfort; and they may take their exercise with a 
form of sword practice that we do not esteem, they 
may be proud of the scars of these imitation duels, 
but these are all matters of tradition and taste. 

When one writes of eating and drinking, it is 
hardly fair to make comparisons from a personal 
stand-point. An adult of average weight requires 
each day 125 grams of proteid or building material, 
500 grams of carbohydrates, 50 grams of fat. This 
equals two ounces, and one-eighth pound of cheese, 
one-half pound of meat, one-quarter pound of fat, 
one pound of potatoes, one-half pint of milk, one- 
quarter pound of eggs, assuming that one egg 
equals two ounces, and one-eighth pound of cheese. 
Divided into three meals, this means : for breakfast, 
two slices of bread and butter and two eggs; for 
dinner: one plateful potato soup, large helping of 
meat with fat, four moderate-sized potatoes, one 
slice bread and butter; for tea: one glass of milk 
and two slices of bread and butter; for supper: two 
slices of bread and butter and two ounces of cheese. 

Plain white bread supplies more caloric, or 
energy, for the price than any other one food, and, 
with one or two exceptions, more proteid, or build- 
ing material, than any other one food. 

One to one and a half fluid ounces of alcohol is 
about the amount which can be completely oxidized 
in the body in a day. This quantity is contained in 
two fluid ounces of brandy or whiskey, five fluid 
ounces of port or sherry, ten of claret or champagne 
or other light wines, and twenty of bottled beer. 

264 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 

All this means that a pint of claret, or two glasses 
of champagne, or a bottle of beer, or a glass of 
whiskey with some aerated water during the day- 
will not hurt a man, and adds perhaps to the " agree- 
ableness of life," as Matthew Arnold phrases it. 
At any rate, this table of contents is a much safer 
standard of comparison, in judging the eating and 
drinking habits of other people, than either your 
habits or mine. 

The German student probably drinks too much, 
and it is said by safe authorities in Germany that 
his heart, liver, and kidneys suffer; but he has been 
at it a long time, and in certain fields of intellectual 
prowess he is still supreme, and as we only drink 
with him now occasionally when he is our host, 
perhaps he had best be left to settle these questions 
without our criticism. 

In general terms, I have always considered, as 
a test of myself and others, that a healthy man is 
one who lies down at night without fear, rises in 
the morning cheerfully, goes to a day's serious work 
of some kind rejoicing in the prospect, meets his 
friends gayly, and loves his loves better than him- 
self. 

It is folly to maintain, that it does not re- 
quire pluck and courage to stand up to a swing- 
ing Schlager, and take your punishment without 
flinching, and then to sit without a murmur while 
your wounds are sewn up and bandaged. I cannot 
help my preference for foot-ball, or base-ball, or 
rowing, or a cross-country run with the hounds, 
or grouse or pheasant shooting, or the shooting of 

265 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

bigger game, or the driving of four horses, or the 
handling of a boat in a breeze of wind, but the 
" world is so full of a number of things" that he 
has more audacity than I who proposes to weigh 
them all in the scales of his personal experience, 
and then to mark them with their relative values. 
First of all, it is to be remembered that these 
Schlager contests between students are in no sense 
duels; a duel being the setting by one man of his 
chance of life against another's chance, both with 
deadly weapons in their hands. These contests with 
the Schlager at the German universities, wrongly 
called duels, are so conducted that there is no pos- 
sibility of permanent or even very serious injury 
to the combatants. The attendants who put them 
into their fighting harness, the doctors who look 
after them during the contest and who care for 
them afterward, are old hands at the game, and 
no mistakes are made. 

There is no feeling of animosity between the 
swordsmen as a rule. They are merely candidates 
for promotion in their own corps who meet candi- 
dates from other corps, and prove their skill and 
courage auf die Mensur, or fighting-ground. 

When a youth joins a corps he chooses a coun- 
sellor and friend, a Leibbarsch, as he is called, 
from among the older men, whose special care it 
is, to see to it that he behaves himself properly 
in his new environment; he pledges himself to re- 
spect the traditions and standards of the corps, and 
to keep himself worthy of respect among his fellows, 
and among those whom he meets outside. A com- 

266 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 

panionship and guardianship not unlike this, used 
to exist in the Greek-letter society to which I once 
belonged. He of course abides by the rules and reg- 
ulations of the order. It is a time of freedom in 
one sense, but it is a freedom closely guarded, and 
there is rigid discipline here as in practically all 
other departments of life in Germany. 

The young students, or Fiichse, as they are called, 
are instructed in the way they should go by the 
older students, or Burschen, whose authority is ab- 
solute. This authority extends even to the people 
whom they may know and consort with, either in 
the university or in the town, and to all questions 
of personal behavior, debts, dissipation, manners, 
and general bearing. In many of the corps there 
are high standards and old traditions as regards 
these matters, and every member must abide by 
them. Every corps student is a patriot, ready to 
sing or fight for Kaiser and Vaterland, and so- 
cialism, even criticism of his country or its rulers, 
are as out of place among them as in the army or 
navy. They are particular as to the men whom they 
admit, and a man's lineage and bearing and rela- 
tions with older members of the corps are carefully 
canvassed before he is admitted to membership. 
Both the present Emperor and one of his sons have 
been members of a corps. 

Let us spend a day with them. It is Saturday. 
We get up rather late, having turned in late after 
the Commers of Friday, when the men who are to 
fight the next day were drunk to, sung to, and 
wished good fortune on the morrow, and sent home 

267 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

early. The trees are turning green at Bonn, the 
shrubs are feeling the air with hesitating blossoms, 
you walk out into the sunshine as gay as a lark, for 
the champagne and the beer of the night before 
were good, and you sang away the fumes of alcohol 
before you went to bed. There was much laughter, 
and a speech or two of welcome for the guest, re- 
sponded to at i a. m. in German, French, English, 
and gestures with a beer-mug, and punctuated with 
the appreciative comments of the company. 

It was a time to slough off twenty years or so 
and let Adam have his chance, and the company 
was of gentlemen who sympathize with and un- 
derstand the " Alter Herr," and are only too de- 
lighted if he will let the springs of youth bubble 
and sparkle for them, and glad to encourage him 
to return to reminiscences of his prowess in love 
and war, and ready to pledge him in bumper after 
bumper success in the days to come. You might 
think it a carouse. Far from it. 

The ceremony is presided over by a stern young 
gentleman, who never for a moment allows any 
member of the company to get out of hand, and 
who, when a speech is to be made, makes it with 
grace and complete ease of manner. Indeed, these 
young fellows surprise one with their easy mastery 
of the art of speech-making. Even the spokesman 
for the Fuchse, or younger students, at the lower 
end of the table, rises and pledges himself and his 
companions in a few graceful words, with certain 
sly references to the possibility that the guest may 
not have lost his appreciation of the charms of Ger- 

268 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 

man womankind, which the guest in question here 
and now, and frankly admits; but not a word of 
coarseness, not a hint that totters on the brink of 
an indiscretion, and what higher praise can one give 
to speech-making on such an occasion! 

My particular host and introducer to his old 
corps is youngest of all, and though seemingly as 
lavish in his potations as any one, sings his way 
home with me, head as clear, legs as steady, eyes 
as bright, as though it were 10 a. m. and not 2 a. m., 
and as though I had not seemed to see his face 
during most of the evening through the bottom of a 
beer-mug. 

That was the night before. The next morning 
we stroll over to the room w T here the Schldger con- 
tests are to take place. It is packed with students 
in their different-colored caps. Beer there is, of 
course, but no smoking allowed till the bouts are 
over. 

I go down to see the men dressing for the fray. 
They strip to the waist, put on a loose half-shirt 
half- jacket of cotton stuff, then a heavily padded 
half -jerkin that covers them completely from chin 
to knee. The throat is wrapped round and round 
with heavy silk bandages. The right arm and hand 
are guarded with a glove and a heavily padded 
leather sleeve; all these impervious to any sword 
blow. The eyes are guarded with steel spectacle 
frames fitted with thick glass. Nothing is exposed 
but the face and the top of the head. The exposed 
parts are washed with antiseptics, as are also the 
swords, repeatedly during the bout. The sword, hilt 

269 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

and blade together, measures one hundred and five 
centimetres. There is a heavy, well-guarded hilt, 
and a pliable blade with a square end, sharp as a ra- 
zor on both edges for some six inches from the end. 

The position in the sword-play is to face squarely 
one's opponent, the sword hand well over the head 
with the blade held down over the left shoulder. 
The distance between the combatants is measured 
by placing the swords between them lengthwise, 
each one with his chest against the hilt of his own 
weapon, and this marks the proper distance be- 
tween them. When they are brought in and face 
one another, the umpire, with a bow, explains the 
situation. The two seconds with swords crouch 
each beside his man, ready to throw up the swords 
and stop the fighting between each bout. Two other 
men stand ready to hold the rather heavily weighted 
sword arm of their comrade on the shoulder dur- 
ing the pauses. Two others with cotton dipped in 
an antiseptic preparation keep the points of the 
swords clean. Still another official keeps a record 
in a book, of each cut or scratch, the length of time, 
the number of bouts, .and the result. The doctor 
decides when a wound is bad enough to close the 
contest. 

At the word " Los! " the blades sing and whistle 
in the air, the work being done almost wholly with 
the wrist, some four blows are exchanged, there is 
a pause, then at it again, till the allotted number of 
bouts are over, or one or the other has been cut to 
the point where the doctor decides that there shall 
be no more. We follow them downstairs again, 

270 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 

where, after being carefully washed, the combatants 
are seated in a chair one after the other, their friends 
crowd around and count the stitches as the surgeon 
works, and comment upon what particular twist of 
the wrist produced such and such a gash. 

I have seen scores of these contests, and during 
the last year as many as a dozen or more. There 
is no record of any one ever having been seriously 
injured; indeed, I doubt if there are not more men 
injured by too much beer than too much sword- 
play. 

It is perhaps expected that the foot-ball player 
should sneer at bull-fighting; the boxer at fencing; 
the rider to hounds at these Schlager bouts ; and that 
we game-players sbould say contemptuous things of 
the contests of our neighbors. Personally, if one 
could eliminate the horse from the contest, I go so 
far as to believe that even bull-fighting is better than 
no game at all. As for these Schlager contests, they 
seem to me no more brutal than our own foot-ball, 
which is only brutal to the shivering crowd of the 
too tender who have never played it, and not so 
dangerous as polo or pig-sticking, and a thousand 
times better than no contest at all. 

I am not of those who believe that the human 
body and that human life are the most precious 
and valuable things in the world. They are only 
servants of the courageous hearts and pure souls 
that ought to be their masters. Without training, 
without obedience, without the instant willingness 
to sacrifice themselves for their masters, the human 
body and human life are contemptible and unworthy. 

271 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

I claim that it braces the mind to expose the body; 
that an education in the prepared emergencies of 
games and sport, is the best training for the unpre- 
pared emergencies with which life is strewn. 

The most cruel people I have ever known were 
gentle enough physically, but they were hard and 
sour in their social relations, and often enough 
called " good " by their fellows. The disappoint- 
ments, losses, sorrows, defeats, of each one of us, 
trouble, even though imperceptibly, the waters of 
life that we all must drink of; and to ignore or to 
rejoice at these misfortunes is only muddying what 
we ourselves must drink. I believe the hardening 
of the body goes some way toward softening the 
heart and cleansing the soul, and toward fitting a 
man with that cheerful charity that supplies the oil 
of intercourse in a creaking world of rival interests. 

To see a youth swinging a sword at his fellow's 
face with delighted energy; to see a man riding off 
vigorously at polo; to see a man hard at it with the 
gloves on; to see another flinging himself and his 
horse over a wall or across a ditch; to see a man 
taking his nerves in hand, to make a two-yard put 
for a half, when he is one down and two to play; 
to see these things without seeing that — perhaps 
often enough in a muddy sort of way — the soul is 
making a slave of the body, that courage is master- 
ing cowardice, that in an elementary way the youth 
is learning how to give himself generously when 
some great emergency calls upon him to give his 
life for an ideal, a tradition, a duty, is to see nothing 
but brutality, I admit. Who does not know that 

272. 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 

the Carthaginians at Cannae were one thing, the 
Carthaginians at Capua another! I have therefore 
no acidulous effeminacy to pour upon these German 
Schlager bouts. I prefer other forms of exercise, 
but I am a hardened believer in the manhood bred 
of contests, and though their ways are not my ways, 
I prefer a world of slashed faces to a world of soft 
ones. 

Prosit, gentlemen! Better your world than the 
world of Semitic haggling and exchange; of cau- 
tion and smoothness; of the disasters born of 
daintiness; of sliding over the ship's side in women's 
clothes to live, when it was a moral duty to be 
drowned. Better your world than any such worlds 
as those, for 

" If one should dream that such a world began 
In some slow devil's heart that hated men, 
Who should deny it ? " 

Milton held that " a complete and generous edu- 
cation fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and 
magnanimously all the offices, both private and 
public, of peace and war." It is my opinion that 
the Schlager has its part to play in this matter of 
education. A mind trained to the keenness of a 
razor's edge, but without a: sound body controlled 
by a steel will, is of small account in the world. 
The whole aim of education is, after all, to make a 
man independent, to make the intelligence reach 
out in keen quest of its object, and at its own and 
not at another's bidding. An education is intended 
to make a man his own master, and so far as any 

273 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

man is not his own master, in just so far is he un- 
educated. What he knows, or does not know, of 
books does not alter the fact. 

Much of the pharisaism and priggishness on the 
subject of education arises from the fact that the 
world is divided into two camps as regards knowl- 
edge: those who believe that the astronomer alone 
knows the stars, and those who believe that he 
knows them best who sleeps in the open beneath 
them. In reality, neither type of mind is complete 
without the other. 

To turn from any theoretical discussion of the 
subject, it remains to be said that Germany has 
trained her whole population into the best working 
team in the world. Without the natural advantages 
of either England or America she has become the 
rival of both. Her superior mental training has 
enabled her to wrest wealth from by-products, and 
she saves and grows rich on what America wastes. 
Whether Germany has succeeded in giving the ply 
of character to her youth, as she folds them in her 
educational factories, I sometimes doubt. That she 
has not made them independent and ready to grapple 
with new situations, and strange peoples, and swift 
emergencies, their own past and present history 
shows. 

It is a very strenuous and economical existence, 
however, for everybody, and it requires a politically 
tame population to be thus driven. The dangerous 
geographical situation of Germany, ringed round 
by enemies, has made submission to hard work, and 
to an iron autocratic government necessary. To 

274 



LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 

be a nation at all it was necessary to obey and to 
submit, to sacrifice and to save. These things they 
have been taught as have no other European peo- 
ple. Greater wealth, increased power, a larger role 
in the world, are bringing new problems. Educa- 
tion thus far has been in the direction of fitting each 
one into his place in a great machine, and less at- 
tention has been paid to the development of that 
elasticity of mind which makes for independence; 
but men educate themselves into independence, and 
that time is coming swiftly for Germany. 

" Also he hath set the world in their heart," 
and one wonders what this population, hitherto so 
amenable, so economical, and so little worldly, will 
do with this new world. The temptations of wealth, 
the sirens of luxury, the opportunities for amuse- 
ment and dissipation, are all to the fore in the Ger- 
many of to-day as they were certainly not twenty- 
five years ago. Ulysses, alas, does not bind himself 
to the mast very tightly as he passes these en- 
chanted isles of modern luxury. " The land of 
damned professors " has learned its lessons from 
those same professors so well, that it is now ready 
to take a postgraduate course in world politics ; and 
as I said in the beginning, some of our friends are 
putting the word " damned " in other parts of this, 
and other sentences, when they describe the rival 
prowess and progress of the Germans. 



275 



VII 
THE DISTAFF SIDE 

MADAME NECKER writes of women: 
" Les f emmes tiennent la place de ces legers 
duvets qu'on introduit dans les caisses de 
porcelaine ; on n'y fait point d'attention, mais si on 
les retire, tout se brise." 

When one sees women and dogs harnessed to- 
gether dragging carts about the streets; when one 
sees women doing the lighter work of sweeping up 
leaves and collecting rubbish in the forests and on 
the larger estates; doing the gardening work in 
Saxony and other places; when one sees them by 
the hundreds working bare-legged in the beet-fields 
in Silesia and elsewhere throughout Germany ; when 
one reads " Viele Weiber sind gut weil sie nicht wis- 
sen wie man es machen muss um bose zu sein," and 
" Der Mann nach Freiheit strebt, das Weib nach 
Sitte," two phrases from the German classics, Les- 
sing and Goethe; when one recalls the shameless 
carelessness of Goethe's treatment of all women; of 
how his love-poems were sometimes sent by the 
same mail to the lady and to the press; and the un- 
restrained worship of Goethe by the German women 
of his day; when one sees time and time again all 
over Germany the women shouldered into the street 
while the men keep to the sidewalk; when one sees 

276 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 

in the streets, railway carriages, and other public 
conveyances, the insulting staring to which every 
woman is subjected if she have a trace of good 
looks, one realizes that at any rate Madame Necker 
was not writing of German women. Let me add 
that so far as the great Goethe is concerned, it is 
by no Puritan yard-stick that I am measuring him, 
but by the German's own high standard which de- 
spises any mating of true sentiment with commer- 
cialism. " Beatus ille qui procul negotiis," certainly 
applies to one's offairs of the heart. 

In the gallery at Dresden, where the loveliest 
mother's face in all the world shines down upon 
you from Raphael's canvas like a benediction, there 
is a small picture by Rubens, " The Judgment of 
Paris." The three goddesses — induitur formosa 
est; exuitur ipsa forma est — have taken literally the 
compliment paid to a certain beautiful customer by 
a renowned French dressmaker : " Un rien et ma- 
dame est habillee ! " They are coquettishly revealing 
their claims to the Eve-bitten fruit which Paris holds 
in his hand. Paris and his friend are in the most 
nonchalant of attitudes. They could not be more 
indifferent, or more superior in appearance, were 
they dandies judging the class for costermonger's 
donkeys at a provincial horse-show. The three most 
beautiful women in the world are squirming and 
posturing for praise, and a decision, before two as 
sophisticated and self-satisfied men as one will ever 
see on canvas or off it. 

The same subject is treated by a man of the same 
breed, but of a later day, named Feuerbach, and his 

277 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

picture hangs, I think, in Breslau. Here again the 
supersuperiority of the male is portrayed. 

In the Church of Saint Sebaldus at Nuremberg, 
there is a delightful mural painting which makes one 
merry even to recall it. The subject is the Garden 
of Eden. Adam and Eve are being lectured by 
an elderly man in flowing robes with a long white 
beard. His beard alone would more than supply 
Adam and Eve with the covering they lack. In an 
easy attitude, with neither haste nor anxiety, he is 
pointing out to them the error of their ways. He 
is as detached in manner as though he were Profes- 
sor Wundt, lecturing to us at Leipsic on the fourth 
dimension of space. Adam is somewhat dejected 
and reclines upon the ground. Eve, unabashed, with 
nothing on but the apple which she is munching, is 
evidently in a reckless mood. She looks like a child 
of fifteen, with her hair down her back ; the defiance 
of her attitude is that of a naughty little girl. The 
world-old problem is under discussion, but with an 
air of good humor and cheerfulness on the part of 
the lecturer, as though there were still time in the 
world, as though hurry were an undiscovered human 
attribute, as though possibly the world would still 
go on even if the problem were left unsolved, and 
this first leafy parliament adjourned sine die. 

They were so much wiser than are we! They 
knew then that there would be other sessions of con- 
gress, and that it was not necessary to decide every- 
thing on that spring day of the year One. But here 
again in this picture it is the male attitude toward 
the woman that is of chief interest. Adam is plainly 

278 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 

bored. What if the woman has broken into the 
sanctuary of knowledge, she will only be the bigger 
fool, he seems to say. As for the professor in the 
red robes, his easy, patronizing manner is indica- 
tive enough of his mental top-loftiness toward the 
woman question. You can almost hear him say as 
he strokes his beard : " Kuche, Kinder, Kirche ! " 

From the fields of Silesia, where the beet indus- 
try is possible only because there are hundreds of 
bare-legged girls and women to single the beets, a 
process not possible by machinery, at a wage of from 
twenty-five to thirty cents a day, to these German 
paintings with their illustrations of the spiritual 
and moral attitude of the German man toward the 
German woman, one sees everywhere and among 
practically all classes an attitude of condescension 
toward women among the polite and polished ; an at- 
titude of carelessness bordering on contempt among 
the rude. Their attitude is like that of the Jews who 
cry in their synagogues, " Thank God for not hav- 
ing made me a woman ! " 

One can judge, not incorrectly, of the status of 
women in a country by the manners and habits of 
the men, entirely dissociated from their relations to 
women. When one sees men equipped with small 
mirrors and small brushes and combs, which they 
use in all sorts of public places, even in the streets, 
in the street-cars, in omnibuses, and in the theatres ; 
when one opens the door to a knock to find a gen- 
tleman, a small mirror in one hand and a tiny brush 
in the other, preparing himself for his entrance into 
your hotel sitting-room ; you are bound to think that 

279 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

these persons are in the childhood days of personal 
hygiene, as it cannot be denied that they are, but 
also that their women folk must be still in the Eryops 
age of social sophistication, not to put a stop to 
such bucolic methods of grooming. Even though the 
Eryops is a gigantic tadpole, a hundred times older 
than the oldest remains of man, this is hardly an 
exaggeration. 

In no other country in the cultured group of na- 
tions is the animal man so naively vain, so deliciously 
self-conscieus, so untrained in the ways of the polite 
world, so serenely oblivious, not merely of the rights 
of women but of the simple courtesy of the strong 
to the weak. It is the only country I have visited 
where the hands of the men are better cared for 
than the hands of the women; and this is not a 
pleasant commentary upon the question of who does 
the rough work, and who has the vanity and who the 
leisure for a meticulous toilet. One must not for- 
get that regular and systematic cleansing of the per- 
son is a very modern fashion. As late as the early 
part of the nineteenth century, tooth-brushes were 
not allowed in certain French convents, being looked 
upon as a luxury. Cleanliness was not very com- 
mon a century and a half ago in any country. In 
1770 the publication of Monsieur Perrel's " Pogo- 
notomie, ou l'Art d'apprendre a se raser soi-meme," 
created a sensation among fashionable people, and 
enthusiasts studied self -shaving. The author of 
" Lois de la Galanterie " in 1640 writes : " Every day 
one should take pains to wash one's hands, and one 
should also wash one's face almost as often! " 

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THE DISTAFF SIDE 

The copious streams of hot and cold water, turned 
into a porcelain tub at any time of the day or night; 
the brushes, and soaps, and towels, and toilet waters, 
and powders of our day were quite unknown to 
our not far-off ancestors. The oft-repeated and mi- 
nute ablutions of our day are almost as modern as 
bicycles, and not as ancient as the railways. The 
Germans are only a little behind the rest of us in 
this soap and water cult, that is all. 

In the streets and public conveyances of the cities, 
in the beer-gardens and restaurants in the country, 
in the summer and winter resorts from the Baltic 
to the Black Forest, from the Rhine to Bohemia, it 
is ever the same. They seat themselves at table first, 
and have their napkins hanging below their Adam's 
apples before their women are in their chairs; hun- 
dreds of times have I seen their women arrive at 
table after they were seated, not a dozen times have I 
seen their masters rise to receive them ; their prefer- 
ence for the inside of the sidewalk is practically 
universal ; even officers in uniform, but this is of rare 
occurrence, will take their places in a railway car- 
riage, all of them smoking, where two ladies are 
sitting, and wait till requested before throwing their 
cigars away, and what cigars! and then by smiles 
and innuendoes make the ladies so uncomfortable 
that they are driven from the carriage. Even eleven 
hundred years ago the German woman had rather 
a rough time of it. Charlemagne had nine wives, 
but he seems to have been unduly uxorious or un- 
wearying in his infatuations. He made the wife 
travel with him, and all nine of them died, worn out 

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GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

by travel and hardship. There is a constancy of 
companionship which is deadly. 

The inconveniences and discomfort of going about 
alone, for ladies in Germany, I have heard not from 
a dozen, but in a chorus from German ladies them- 
selves. I am reciting no grievances of my compa- 
triots, for I have seen next to nothing of Americans 
for a year or more, and I have no personal com- 
plaints, for these soft adventurers scent danger 
quickly, and give the masters of the world, whether 
male or female, a wide berth. 

These gross manners are the result of two fac- 
tors in German life that it is well to keep in mind. 
They are a poor people, only just emerging from 
poverty, slavery, and disaster; poor not only in 
possessions, but poor in the experience of how to 
use them. They do not know how to use their new 
freedom. They are as awkward in this new world 
of theirs, of greater wealth and opportunity, as un- 
yoked oxen that have strayed into city streets. The 
abject deference of the women, who know nothing 
better than these parochial masters, adds to their 
sense of their own importance. It is largely the 
women themselves who make their men insupport- 
able. 

The other factor is the rigid castle system of their 
social habits. There is no association between the 
officers, the nobility, the officials, the cultured classes, 
and the middle and lower classes. The public schools 
and universities are learning shops; they do not 
train youths in character, manners, or in the ways 
of the world. They do not play together, or work 

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THE DISTAFF SIDE 

together, or amuse themselves together. The creeds 
and codes, habits and manners of the better classes 
are, therefore, not allowed to percolate and permeate 
those less experienced. There is no word for gen- 
tleman in German. The words gebildeter and an- 
stdndiger are used, and it is significant to notice that 
the stress is thus laid on mental development or upon 
obedience to formal rules. A man may be a very 
great gentleman and a true gentleman and not be a 
scholar. The late Duke of Devonshire cared more 
for horses than for books and pictures, and Abra- 
ham Lincoln was one of the greatest gentlemen of 
all time. 

In Homburg one day I saw a tall, fine-looking, 
elderly man step aside and off the sidewalk to let 
two ladies pass. It was for Germany a noticeable 
act. He turned out to be a famous general then in 
waiting upon the Emperor. There are not a few 
such courtly gentlemen in Germany, not a few whose 
knightliness compares with that of any gentleman in 
the world. Alas for the great bulk of the Germans, 
they never come into contact with them, their ex- 
ample is lost, their leaven of high breeding and 
courtesy does not lighten the bourgeois loaf! In 
America and in England we are all threading our 
way in and out among all classes. We are much 
more democratic. Men of every class are in con- 
tact with men of every other, we play together and 
work together, and consequently the level of man- 
ners and habits is higher. This state of things is 
less marked in south Germany than in Prussia, but 
is more or less true everywhere. 

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GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

But how can this be possible, I hear it replied, in 
that land where every officer clacks his heels to- 
gether with a report like an exploding torpedo, 
ducks his head from his rigid vertebrae, and then 
bends to kiss the lady's hand; and where every 
civilian of any standing does the same? I am not 
writing of the nobility and of the corps of officers in 
this connection. No doubt there are black sheep 
among them, though I have not met them. Of the 
many scores of them whom I have met, whom I have 
ridden with, dined with, romped with, drunk with, 
travelled with, I have only to say that they are as 
courteous, as unwilling to offend or to take advan- 
tage, as are brave men in other countries I know. 
I am writing of the average man and woman, of 
those who make up the bulk of every population, of 
those upon whom it depends whether a national life 
is healthy or otherwise. 

The very stiffness of these mannerisms, the 
clacking of heels, the ducking of heads, the kissing 
of hands, the countless grave formalities among the 
men themselves, are all indicative of social weak- 
ness. They are afraid to walk without the crutches 
of certain formulae, of certain hard-and-fast rules, 
of certain laws that they worship and fall down be- 
fore. Slavery is still upon them. Escaped from a 
bodily master they fly to the refuge of a moral 
and spiritual one. These formalities are prescribed 
forms which they wear as they wear uniforms; they 
are not the result of innate consideration. 

Uniform- wearing is a passion among the Ger- 
mans, and may be included as still another indi- 

284 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 

cation of the universal desire to take refuge behind 
forms, and laws, and fixed customs, the universal 
desire to shrink from depending upon their own 
judgment and initiative. They will not even bow or 
kiss a lady's hand, without a prescription from a 
social physician whom they trust. 

The German officials are always officials, always 
addressed and addressing others punctiliously by 
their titles. They do not throw off officialdom out- 
side their duties and their offices as we do, but they 
glory in it. We throw off our uniforms as soon as 
may be; we feel hampered by them. This leads to 
a feeling on the part of the Germans that we are too 
free and easy, and not respectful enough toward our 
own dignity or toward theirs. We feel, on the 
other hand, that it is a farce to go to the every-day 
markets of life, whether for daily food or for daily 
social intercourse, with the bullion and certified 
checks of our official dignity ; we go rather with the 
small change that jingles in all pockets alike, and is 
ready to be handed out for the frequent and unim- 
portant buying and selling of the day and hour. We 
look upon this grallatory attitude toward life as ar- 
tificial and hampering, and prefer to walk among our 
neighbors as much as possible upon our own feet. 

I am not pretending to fix standards of etiquette. 
I can quite understand that when we grab the hand 
of the German's wife and shake it like a pump-han- 
dle instead of bowing over it; that when we nod 
cheerfully to him in the street with a wave of the 
hand or a lifting of a cane or umbrella instead of 
taking off our hat ; that when we fail to address both 

285 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

him and his lady with the title belonging to them, 
no matter how commonplace that title, we shock his 
prejudices and his code of good manners. 

If there is a stranger, a lady, in the drawing-room 
before dinner the German men line up in single file 
and ask to be presented to her. If the lady is tall 
and handsome and the party a large one, it looks 
almost like an ovation. If you go to dine at an 
officers' mess the men think it their duty to come up 
and ask to be presented to you, They wear their 
mourning bands on the forearm instead of the up- 
perarm ; they wear their wedding-rings on the fourth 
finger of the right hand; many of them wear rather 
more conspicuous jewelry than we consider to be in 
good taste. 

The sofa, too, plays a role in German households 
and offices for which I have sought in vain for an 
explanation. Not even German archaeology supplies 
a historical ancestry for this sofa cult. It is the 
place of honor. If you go to tea you are enthroned 
on the sofa. Even if you go to an office, say of the 
police, or of the manager of the city slaughter- 
house, or of the hospital superintendent, you are ma- 
noeuvred about till they get you on the sofa, generally 
behind a table. I soon discovered that this was the 
seat of honor. Sofas have their place in life, I ad- 
mit. There are sofas that we all remember with 
tears, with tenderness, with reverence. They have 
been the boards upon which we first appeared in the 
role of lover perhaps; or where we have fondled and 
comforted a discouraged child; or where we have 
pumped new ambitions and larger life into a weaker 

286 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 

brother; or where we have tossed in the agony of 
grief or disappointment; or where we have waited 
drearily and alone the result of a consultation of 
moral or physical life and death in the next room. 
Indeed, this all reminds me that I could write an es- 
say on sofas that would be poignant, touching, au- 
tobiographical, luminous, as could most other men, 
but this would not explain the position of the sofa 
in Germany in the least. " Travels on a Sofa " — I 
must do it one day, and perhaps, with more serious 
study of the subject, light may be thrown upon this 
question of the sofa in Germany. 

Even at large and rather formal dinner-parties the 
host bows and drinks to his guests, first one and 
then another. At the end of the meal, in many 
households, it is the custom to bow and kiss your 
hostess's hand and say " Mahlzeit" a shortened 
form of " May the meal be blessed to you." You 
also shake hands with the other guests and say 
u Mahlzeit." In some smarter houses this is looked 
upon as old-fashioned and is not done. I look upon 
it as a charming custom, and think it a pity that it 
should be done away with. 

Young unmarried girls and women courtesy to 
the elder women and kiss their hands, also a cus- 
tom I approve. On the other hand, where a stalwart 
officer appears in a small drawing-room and seats 
himself at the slender tea-table for a cup of after- 
noon tea, holding his sword by his side or between 
his legs, that seems to me an unnecessary precaution, 
even when Americans are present, for many of us 
nowadays go about unarmed. 

287 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Except on official or formal occasions it seems a 
matter of questionable good taste to appear, say in a 
hotel restaurant, with one's breast hung with medals 
or with orders on one's coat or in the button-hole. 
Let 'em find out what a big boy am I without help 
from self-imposed placards seems to me to be per- 
haps the more modest way. The method in vogue 
in Japanese temples, where the worshippers jangle a 
bell to call the attention of the gods to their prayers 
or offerings, seems out of place where the god is 
merely the casual man in the street, in a Berlin res- 
taurant 

At more than one dinner the soup is followed by 
a meat course, after which comes the fish. This does 
not mean that the dinners are not good. I fondly 
recall a dish of sauerkraut boiled in white wine and 
served in a pineapple. I may not give names, but the 
dinners of Mr. and Mrs. Fourth of December, of 
Mrs. Twenty-first of January, of Mr. and Mrs. 
Thirtieth of January, and of Mr. and Mrs. February 
First, and others rank very high in my gastronomic 
calendar. Do not imagine from what I have written 
that Lucullus has left no disciples in Germany. I 
could easily add a page to the list I have mentioned, 
and because we look upon some of these customs 
of the German as absurd is no reason for forgetting 
that he often, and from his stand-point rightly, looks 
upon us as boors. I like the Germans and I pretend 
to have learned very much from them. To sneer at 
superficial differences is to lose all profit from inter- 
course with other peoples. Goethe is right, " Uebe- 
rall lernt man nur von dem, den man liebt ! " The 

288 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 

argument is only all on our side when we are im- 
pervious to impressions and to other standards of 
manners and morals than our own. 

" Am Ende hangen wir doch ab 
Von Kreaturen die wir machten" 

are two lines at least from the second part of 
" Faust " that we can all understand. 

It is sometimes thrown at us Americans that we 
love a title, and that we are not averse to the orna- 
mentation of our names with pseudo and attenuated 
" Honorables " and " Colonels " and " Judge " and 
so on; and I am bound to admit the impeachment, 
for I blush at some of my becolonelled and becap- 
tained friends, and wonder at their rejoicing over 
such effeminate honorifics, especially those colonel- 
cies born of clattering behind a civilian governor, on 
a badly ridden horse, a title which may be compared 
with that most attenuated title of all, that of a 
Texan, who when asked why he was called 
" colonel " replied, that he had married the widow 
of a colonel ! 

I prefer " Esqr." to " Mr." merely because it 
makes it easier to assort the daily mail; "Mr.," 
" Mrs./' and " Miss " are so easily taken for one an- 
other on an envelope, and particularly at Christmas 
time this more distinctly legible title avoids the de- 
plorable misdirection of the secrets of Santa Claus; 
aside from that I am happy to be addressed merely 
by my name, like any other sovereign. 

We are, too, somewhat overexcited when foreign 
royalties appear among us. " What wud ye do if ye 

289 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

were a king an' come to this counthry ? " asked Mr. 
Hennessy. 

" Well," said Mr. Dooley, " there's wan thing I 
wuddent do. I wuddent r-read th' Declaration iv 
Independence. I'd be afraid I'd die laughin'." 

In Germany not only are titles showered upon the 
populace, but it is distinctly and officially stated by 
what title the office-holder shall be addressed. 

In a case I know, a certain lady failed to sign her- 
self to one of the small officials working upon her 
estate as, let us say, " I remain very sincerely yours," 
or its German equivalent ; whereupon the person ad- 
dressed wrote and demanded that communications 
addressed to him should be signed in the regulation 
manner. A lawyer was consulted, and it was found 
that a similar case had been taken to the courts and 
decided in favor of the recipient of wounded van- 
ity. 

In hearty and manly opposition to this attitude 
toward life is the example of Admiral X. He had 
served long and gallantly, and just before he retired 
a friend said to him : " I hear that they're going to 
knight you." " By God, sir, not without a court- 
martial ! " was the prompt reply. Indeed, things 
have come to such a pass in England that the offer 
of a knighthood to a gentleman of lineage, breed- 
ing, and real distinction, has been for years looked 
upon as either a joke or an insult. 

Not so among my German friends; they have a 
ravenous appetite for these flimsy tickets of passing 
commendation. At many, many hospitable boards 
in Berlin I have been present where no left breast 

290 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 

was barren of a medal, and where the only medal 
won by participation in actual warfare, belonging 
to one of the guests, was safely packed away in his 
house. And as for the titles, there is no room in a 
small volume like this to enumerate them all; and 
the women folk all carry the titles of the husband, 
from Frau Ober-Postassistent, Frau Regierungs 
Assessor, up to the Chancellor's lady, who, by the 
way, wears a title in her mere face and bearing. 
Not long ago I saw in a provincial sheet the notice 
of the death of a woman of eighty, who was gravely 
dignified by her bereaved relatives with the title, and 
as the relict of, a veterinary. 

Upon a certain funicular at a mountain resort, 
where the cars pass one another up and down every 
twenty minutes, the conductors salute one another 
stiffly each time they pass. 

Of the army of people with titles of Ober- 
Regierungsrat, Geheimer Regierungsrat, Wirklicher 
Geheimer Regierungsrat, Wirklicher Geheimer 
Ober-Regierungsrat, Wirklicher Geheimerat, who 
also carries the additional title of " Excellenz " with 
his title; Referendar, Assessor, Justizrat, Geheimer 
Justizrat, Gerichts-Assessor, Amtsrichter, Amtsge- 
richtrat, Oberamtsrichter, Landgerichtsdirector, 
Amtsgerichtsprasident, Geheimer Finanzrat, Wirk- 
licher Geheimer Ober Finanzrat, Legationsrat, 
Wirklicher Geheimer Legationsrat, Vice Konsul, 
Konsul, General Konsul, Commercienrat, Wirk- 
lichercommercienrat, Staatsanwalt, Staatsanwalt- 
schaftsrat, Herr Erster Staatsanwalt, where the 
" Herr " is a legal part of the title; of those who 

291 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

must be addressed as " Excellenz," and in addition 
military and naval titles, and the horde of handles 
to names of those in the railway, postal, telegraph, 
street-cleaning, forestry, and other departments, 
one must merely throw up one's hands in despair, 
and bow to the inevitable disgrace of being quite 
unable to name this Noah's-ark procession of petty 
dignitaries. 

In the department of post and telegraph a new 
order has gone forth, issued during the last few 
months, by which, after passing certain examina- 
tions, the employees may take the title of Ober- 
Postschaffner and OberJLeitungsaufseher. After 
thirty years' service the postman is dignified with 
the title of Ober-Brief trager. It is difficult to under- 
stand the type of mind which is flattered by such in- 
fantile honors. At any rate, it is a cheap system of 
rewards, and so long as men will work for such 
trumpery ends the state profits by playing upon their 
childish vanity. During the year 1912 more than 
7,000 decorations were distributed, and some 1,500 
of these were of the three classes of the Order of 
the Red Eagle. On the twenty-fifth anniversary of 
the reign of the present Emperor, in 1913, still an- 
other medal is to be struck, to be given to worthy 
officials and officers. 

All the professions and all the trades, too, have 
their pharmacopoeia of tags and titles, and you will 
go far afield to find a German woman who is not 
Frau Something-or-other Schmidt, or Fischer, or 
Mjiller. Every day one hears women greeting one 
another as Frau Oberforstmeister, Frau Super inten- 

292 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 

dent, Frau Medicinalrat, Frau Oberbergrat, Frau 
Apothek, Frau Stadt-Musikdirektor, Frau Doktor 
Rechtsanwalt, Frau Geschaftsfuhrer, and the like. 
All these titles, too, appear in the hotel registers 
and in all announcements in the newspapers. Even 
when a man dies, his title follows him to the grave, 
and even beyond it, in the speech of those left be- 
hind. 

These uniforms and titles and small formalities 
do make, I admit, for orderliness and rigidity, and 
perhaps for contentment; since every man and wo- 
man feels that though they are below some one else 
on the ladder they are above others ; and every day 
and in every company their vanity is lightly tickled 
by hearing their importance, small though it be, 
proclaimed by the mention of their titles. 

It pleases the foreigners to laugh and sometimes 
to jeer at the universal sign of " Verboten" (For- 
bidden) seen all over Germany. They look upon 
it as the seal of an autocratic and bureaucratic gov- 
ernment. It is nothing of the kind. The army, the 
bureaucracy, the autocratic Kaiser at the helm, 
and the landscape bestrewn with " Verbotin " and 
" Nicht gestattet" (Not allowed), these are neces- 
sities in the case of these people. They do not know 
instinctively, or by training or experience, where to 
expectorate and where not to ; where to smoke and 
where not to; what to put their feet on and what 
not to; where to walk and where not to; when to 
stare and when not to; when to be dignified and 
when to laugh; and, least of all, how to take a joke; 
how, when, or how much to eat, drink, or bathe, 

293 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

or how to dress properly or appropriately. The 
Emperor is almost the only man in Germany who 
knows what chaff is and when to use it. 

The more you know them, the longer you live 
among them, the less you laugh at " Verboten" 
The trouble is not that there are too many of these 
warnings, but that there are not enough! When 
you see in flaring letters in the street-cars, " In 
alighting the left hand on the left-hand rail/' when 
you read on the bill of fare in the dining-car brief 
instructions underlined, as to how to pour out your 
wine so that you will not spill it on the table-cloth ; 
when you see the list of from ten to fifteen rules 
for passengers in railway carriages; when you see 
everywhere where crowds go and come, " Keep to 
the right " ; when you see hanging on the railings 
of the canals that flow through Berlin a life-buoy, 
and hanging over it full instructions with diagrams 
for the rescue of the drowning; when you see over 
a post-box, " Aufschrift und Marke nicht verges- 
sen " (Do not forget to stamp and address your 
envelope) ; when you see in the church entrances a 
tray with water and sal volatile, and the countless 
other directions and remedies and preventives on 
every hand, you shrug your Saxon shoulders and 
smile pityingly, if you do not stand and stare and 
then laugh outright, as I was fool enough to do at 
first. But you soon recover from this superficial 
view of matters Teutonic. In one cab I rode in I 
was cautioned not to expectorate, not to put my 
feet on the cushions, not to tap on the glass with 
stick or umbrella, not to open the windows, but to 

294 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 

ask the driver to do it, and not to open the door till 
the auto-taxi stopped ; one hardly has time to learn 
the rules before the journey is over. 

In April, 19 13, more laws are to come into effect 
for the street traffic. People may not walk more 
than three abreast; they may not swing their canes 
and umbrellas as they walk ; they may not drag their 
garments in the street; they may not sing, whistle, 
or talk loudly in the street, nor congregate for con- 
versation; there will follow, of course, a regulation 
as to the length of women's dresses to be worn in 
the street, and no doubt the police commissioner, an 
amiable bachelor, will decree that the shorter the 
better. All these fussy regulations are ridiculous to 
us, but in reality they are horrible and give one a 
feeling of suffocation when living in Germany. In 
the days when everybody rode a bicycle, each rider 
was obliged to pass an examination in proficiency, 
pay a small tax, and was given a number and a li- 
cense. Women who persisted in wearing dangerous 
hat-pins have been ejected from public vehicles. 

After April 1, 19 13, no shop in Berlin can ad- 
vertise or hold a bargain sale without permission 
of the police. The changed prices must be affixed 
to the goods four days before the sale for inspec- 
tion by the police, and only two such sales are per- 
mitted a year, and these must take place either be- 
fore February 15, or between June 15 and August 
1st. All particulars of the sale must be handed to 
the police a week in advance. In a carriage on the 
'Bavarian railroad, a husband who kissed and petted 
his tired wife was complained of by a fellow-pas- 

295 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

senger. The husband was tried, judged guilty, and 
fined. There was no question but that the woman 
was his wife; thus there is no loop-hole left for the 
legally curious, and thousands of male Germans 
hug and kiss one another on railway-station plat- 
forms who surely ought to be fined and imprisoned 
or deported or hanged! All this may be a relic of 
Roman law. Cato dismissed Marilius from the 
Senate because he kissed his own wife by daylight 
in the presence of their own daughter. 

Shortly after leaving Germany, I returned from 
a few weeks' shooting in Scotland. We bundled 
out of the train onto the station platform in London. 
Dogs, gun-cases, cartridge-boxes, men and maid ser- 
vants, trunks, bags, baskets, bunches of grouse, and 
the passengers seemed in a chaotic huddle of con- 
fusion. In Germany at least twenty policemen 
would have been needed to disentangle us. I was 
so torpid from having been long Teutonically cared 
for, that I looked on momentarily paralyzed. 
There was no shouting, not a harsh word that I 
heard; and as I was almost the last to get away, I 
can vouch for it that in ten minutes each had his 
own and was off. I had forgotten that such things 
could be done. I had been so long steeped in en- 
forced orderliness, that I had forgotten that real 
orderliness is only born of individual self-control. 
I forgot that I was back among the free spirits who 
govern a quarter of the habitable globe and whose 
descendants are making America; and even if here 
and there one or more, and they are often recently 
arrived immigrants, are intoxicated by freedom and 

296 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 

shoot or steal like drunken men ; I realized that I am 
still an Occidental barbarian, thank God, preferring 
liberty, even though it is punctuated now and then 
with shots and screams and thefts, to official guard- 
ianship, even though I am thus saved the shooting, 
the screaming, and the thieving. 

In the nine years ending 1910, our Fourth of 
July celebrations cost America in killed, 1,800; in 
wounded, 35,000; but even that is better than the 
civic throttling of the German method. It seems 
to be forgotten that the men who keep the world 
fresh with their saline vigor, love risks as they love 
fresh air. They should be curbed, but not stran- 
gled! 

You read their history, you watch closely their 
manners, you prowl about among them, in their 
streets, their shops, their houses, their theatres ; you 
accompany the crowds on a holiday in the trains, in 
the forests, in the summer resorts, at their concerts 
or their picnics, in their beer-gardens and restau- 
rants, and you soon see that the orderliness is all 
forced upon them from without, and not due to 
their own knowledge of how to take care of them- 
selves. 

In a recent volume by a distinguished German 
prison official he writes that, after a careful study 
of the figures from 1882 to 19 10, he has discovered 
that one person now living in every twelve in Ger- 
many has been convicted of some offence. Doctor 
Finkelnburg shows that the number of " criminals " 
in Germany is 3,869,000, of whom 3,060,000 are 
males, and 809,000 females. Every 43d boy and 

297 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

every 213th girl between the ages of twelve and 
eighteen has been punished by fine or imprisonment. 
This does not mean that the Germans are criminal 
or disorderly, but, on the contrary, it shows how 
absurdly petty are the violations of the law punished 
by fine or imprisonment. 

Their whole history, from Charlemagne down 
until the last fifty years, is a series of going to 
pieces the moment the strong hand of authority is 
taken away from them. The German, and especi- 
ally the Prussian policeman, has become the great- 
est official busybody in the world. No German's 
house is his castle. The policeman enters at will 
and, backed by the authorities, questions the house- 
holder about his religion, his servants, the atten- 
dance of his children at school, the status of the 
guests staying in his house, and about many other 
matters besides. If one of his children by reason 
of ill health is taught at home, the authorities de- 
mand the right to send an inspector every six 
months to examine him or her, to be sure that the 
child is properly taught. The policeman is in at- 
tendance on the platform at every public meeting, 
armed with authority to close the meeting if either 
speeches or discussion seem to him unpatriotic, 
unlawful, or strife-breeding. Professors, pastors, 
teachers are all muzzled by the state, and must 
preach and teach the state orthodoxy or go! A 
young professor of political economy in Berlin only 
lately was warned, and has become strangely silent 
since. 

The de-Germanizing of the German abroad is in 

298 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 

line with this, and a constant source of annoyance 
to the powers that be. Buda-Pesth was founded by 
Germans in 1241, and now not one-tenth of the pop- 
ulation is German. As the Franks became French, 
as the Long Beards became Italians, so the Ger- 
mans become Americans in America, English in 
England, Austrian and Bohemian in Austria and 
Bohemia. It has been a problem to prevent their 
becoming Poles where the state has settled Ger- 
mans for the distinct purpose of ousting the Poles. 

In China, in South America, and even in Sumatra 
I have heard German officials tell with indignation 
of how their compatriots rapidly *ake the local 
color, and lose their German habits and customs 
and point of view. 

One of the half dozen best-known bankers in 
Berlin has lamented to me that he must change his 
people in South America every few years, as they 
soon go to pieces there. Army officers came home 
from China indignant to find their compatriots there 
speaking English and unwilling even to speak Ger- 
man. Even as long ago as the time of the Thirty 
Years' War a forgotten chronicler, Adam Junghaus 
von der Ohritz, writes: "Further, it is a misfor- 
tune to the Germans that they take to imitating like 
monkeys and fools. As soon as they come among 
other soldiers, they must have Spanish or other out- 
landish clothes. If they could babble foreign lan- 
guages a little, they would associate themselves 
with Spaniards and Italians/' Wilhelm von Po- 
lentz, in his " das Land der Zukunft," writes : " die 
Deutsch-Amerikaner sind fur die alte Heimat dau- 

299 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

ernd verloren, politisch ganz und kulturell beinahe 
vollstandig." 

Bismarck knew these people and the present Em- 
peror knows these people, better than do you and 
I ! Bismarck even insisted upon using the German 
text, and once returned a letter of congratulation 
from an official body because it was written in the 
Latin text. Even the Great Elector must have 
recognized this weakness when he said : " Gedenke 
dass du bist ein Deutscher ! " The present Kaiser 
lends his whole social influence to keep the Ger- 
mans German. He will have the bill of fare in 
German, he prefers the dreadful word Mundtuch 
to napkin. His officers very often demand that the 
bill of fare in a German hotel shall be presented to 
them in German and not in French. And they are 
quite right to do so, and quite right to hang the Ger- 
man world with the sign " Verboten" ; quite right 
to distribute titles and medals and orders, for the 
more they are uniformed and decorated and ticketed 
and drilled, and taken care of, the better they like 
it, and the more contented these people are. Over- 
organization has brought this about. Their theories 
have hardened into a veritable imprisonment of the 
will. They have drifted away from Goethe's wise 
saying : " That man alone attains to life and free- 
dom who daily has to conquer them anew." 

Let me refer again just here to the socialist 
propaganda, which seems to the outsider so strong 
here in Germany. Even this is far flabbier than it 
looks, as I have attempted to explain elsewhere. 
In such strong and out-and-out industrial centres 

300 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 

as Essen, Duisburg-Muhlheim, Saarbriicken, and 
Bochum, where a vigorous fight has been made 
against socialism, the following are the figures of 
the last election in 19 12 when the socialists largely- 
increased their vote throughout other parts of Ger- 
many : 





NATIONALLIBERAL 


ZENTRUM 


SOCIALDEMOKRAT 


Essen 


25,937 

33,934 

25,108 
42,257 


42,832 

31,559 
24,228 
37,650 


40,503 

34,187 
4,157 
64,833 


Duisburg-Muhl- 
heim 


Saarbrucken 

Bochum 



I cite this example because it seems as though the 
growth of socialism in- Germany were in direct con- 
tradiction to my argument that they are a soft, 
an impressionable, an amenable, and easily led and 
governed people. 

State socialism as thus far put into practice in 
Germany is, in a nutshell, the decision on the part 
of the state or the rulers that the individual is not 
competent to spend his own money, to choose his 
own calling, to use his own time as he will, or to 
provide himself for his own future and for the 
various emergencies of life. And by the minute 
state control, they are rapidly bringing the whole 
population to an enfeebled social and political con- 
dition, where they can do nothing for themselves. 

They have been knocked about and dragooned by 
their own rulers and, be it said and emphasized, 
they have received certain compensations and gained 

301 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

certain advantages, if nothing else an orderliness, 
safety, and care for the people by the state un- 
equalled elsewhere in the world. But there is no 
gainsaying, on the other hand, that they have lost 
the fruits that are plucked by the nations of more in- 
dividualistic training. 

They have clean streets, cheap music and drama, 
and a veritable mesh of national education with in- 
terstices so small that no one can escape, and they 
are coddled in every direction; but they have no 
stuff for colonizers, and they have been not in- 
frequently wofully lacking in stalwart statesmen, 
and leaders. 

To deprive the worker of his choice of expendi- 
ture, by taking all but a pittance of it in taxation, 
is a dangerous deprivation of moral exercise. To 
be able to choose for oneself is a vitally necessary 
appliance in the moral gymnasium, even if here and 
there one chooses wrong. It is a curious trend of 
thought of the day, which proposes to cure social 
evils always by weakening, rather than by strength- 
ening the individual. 

Socialism is merely a moral form of putting a 
sharper bit in humanity's mouth; when of course 
the highest aim, the optimistic view, is to train 
people to go as fast and straight and far as possible, 
with the least possible hampering of their natural 
powers by legislation. " Some men are by nature 
free, others slaves," writes Aristotle, but whether 
this axiom can be accepted fully or not, it is un- 
doubtedly true that you can first dragoon and then 
coddle a whole people, into a lack of independence 

302 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 

and a shrinking from the responsibilities of free- 
dom. 

We are drugging the people ourselves just now 
with legislation as a cure for the evils of indus- 
trialism, but such legislation will only do what 
soporifics can do, they numb the pain, but they never 
bring health. What a forlorn philosophy it is! 
Men take advantage, rob and steal, we say, and to 
do away with this we give up the fight for fair play 
and orderliness and propose sweeping away all the 
prizes of life, hoping thus to do away with the high- 
waymen of commerce and finance. If there is no 
booty, there will be no bandit, we say, forgetting 
altogether the corollary that if there are no prizes 
there will be no prizemen! Neither God nor Na- 
ture gives anything to those who do not struggle, 
and both God and Nature appoint the stern task- 
master, Necessity, to see to it that we do struggle. 
Now come the ignorant and the socialists, demand- 
ing that the state step in and roll back the very laws 
of creation by supplying what is not earned from 
the surplus of the strong. Who cannot see anarchy 
looming ahead of this programme, for it is surely 
a lunatic negation of all the laws of God and Na- 
ture? They do not seem to see either in America 
or in England that state supervision carried too far 
leads straight to the sanction of all the demands 
of socialism and syndicalism. Legislation was never 
intended to be the father of a people, but their 
policeman. Overlegislation, whether by an auto- 
crat or a democratic state, leads straight to revolu- 
tion, to Caesarism, or to slavery. 

303 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

In Germany the state by giving much has gained 
an appalling control over the minute details of hu- 
man intercourse. I am no philosophic adviser to 
the rich ; it is as the champion of the poor man that 
I detest socialism and all its works, for in the end 
it only leads backward to slavery. Every vote the 
workingman gives to a policy of wider state con- 
trol is another link for the chains that are meant for 
his ankles, his wrists, and his neck. If the state is 
to take care of me when I am sick or old or unem- 
ployed, it must necessarily deprive me of my liberty 
when I am well and young and busy, and thus make 
my very health a kind of sickness. A year in Ger- 
many ought to cure any sensible workingman of the 
notion that the state is a better guardian of his purse 
and his powers than he is himself. A distinguished 
German publicist, criticising this overpowering in- 
terference of the state, writes : " Mir ist wohl be- 
wusst dass diese Gedanken einstweilen fromme 
Wunsche bleiben werden: die Schatten lahmender 
Miidigkeit die iiber unserer Politik lagern, lassen 
wenig Hoffnung auf frohliche Initiative. Allein 
immer kann und wird es nicht so bleiben." And he 
ends with the ominous words : " Reform oder Revo- 
lution!" 

One often hears the apostles of a certain kit- 
tenish humanitarianism, talking of the great good 
that would result if we in America would provide 
light wines and beer and music, and parks and 
gardens, for our people. They see the crowds of 
men and women and children flocking by thou- 
sands to such resorts in Germany, where they eat 

304 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 

tons of cakes and Brodchens and jam, and where 
they drink gallons of beer and wine, and where they 
sit hour after hour apparently quite content. Why, 
Lord love you, ladies and gentlemen, our populace 
would never be content with such mild amusements ! 
Fancy " Silver Dollar " Sullivan or " Bath-house " 
John attempting to cajole their cohorts in such 
fashion ! 

It may be a pity that our people are not thus 
easily amused, but, on the other hand, it means 
simply that our energy, our vitality, our na- 
tional nervousness if you like, will not be so easily 
satisfied. Our disorderly nervousness, or nervous 
disorderliness, though it has been a tremendous as- 
set in keeping us bounding along industrially and 
commercially, and though it gives an* exhilarating, 
champagne-like flavor to our atmosphere, has cost 
us dear. If you will have freedom, you will have 
those who are ruined by it; just as, if you will have 
social and political servitude, you will have a stodgy, 
unindependent populace. , 

Only one out of sixty perpetrators of homicidal 
crime suffers the extreme penalty attaching to such 
crimes in America, and these figures, I admit, are a 
shocking revelation of supine justice and senti- 
mental executive, as when politics can even bend 
our President to grant silly pardons, with baleful 
results upon the doings of other wealthy criminals. 
We use as large an amount of habit-forming drugs 
per capita as is used in the Chinese empire, so says 
Dr. Wright, who was commissioned by the State 
Department to gather facts on this subject. We 

305 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

import and consume 500,000 pounds of opium 
yearly, when 70,000 pounds, including its deriva- 
tives and preparations, should suffice for our medi- 
cal needs. In the year 1910 no less than 185,000 
ounces of cocaine were imported, manufactured, 
and consumed, although 15,000 ounces would sup- 
ply every legitimate need. America collected $340,- 
000,000 from tariff taxes in 191 1, and $40,000,000 
of this from tobacco and alcoholics. 

My readers may look back to the title of this 
chapter and ask: What has all this to do with the 
status of women in Germany? I have told you in 
these few pages the whole secret. The men are not 
independent; what can you expect of the women! 
The men have, until very lately, had no surplus 
wealth or leisure, and have now, to all appearance, 
little surplus vitality or energy. Germany is getting 
to be a very tired-looking nation. One hears almost 
as little laughter in Germany as in India. Gayety 
and laughter are the bubbles and foam on the glass of 
life, proving that it is charged with energy. Do not 
believe me, although I have carefully watched many 
thousands of Germans in all parts of Germany tak- 
ing their pleasure and their ease ; come over and see 
for yourself! These thousands at their simple rec- 
reations are not gay. I grant the dangers we run 
by the opposite policy, but these are the results we 
have to fear from the German methods. 

It is the men who must supply the leisure, the 
independence, the setting, the background for the 
women. All Europe says that our women are 
spoiled, that they are tyrants, that they treat us 

306 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 

men badly, that they flout us, do not do their duty 
by us, and finally divorce us. We can afford to let 
them say it! We have given our women an inde- 
pendence that many of them abuse, it is true. We 
perhaps give them more than their share to spend, 
and more of luxury than is good for them; and all 
too many of the underbred among them paint and 
be jewel and begown themselves to imitate the lech- 
erous barbarism of the too free. But one of the 
greatest ladies in Germany tells me, " I am never 
so flattered as when I am taken for an American! " 
I can pay her no handsomer compliment than to re- 
ply that she is worthy of the mistake. Our women 
revive the drooping dukedoms of England, and few 
will maintain that some of them at least are un- 
suited to the position. I have seen them in Ger- 
many as Frau Grafin this or that, and not only their 
appearance but their house-keeping machinery, run- 
ning noiselessly and accurately, proves that there is 
something more than dollars behind them. 

One of the rare human beings whom I have 
known, who has at the same time the character- 
istics of the generous comrade, the good fellow, 
and the fine gentleman; who in moral courage in 
time of terrible strain, or in physical courage when 
one's back is to the wall, never quailed, is an Amer- 
ican woman; and thousands of my countrymen will 
say the same. 

You cannot produce this type without freedom, 
without giving them opportunity, and taking the 
risks that are inherent in giving free scope to per- 
sonal prowess. But they are not the women whom 

307 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

our blatant newspapers exploit, nor the women 
who buy the British aristocracy to launch them 
socially, nor the women who pervade the continental 
hotels and restaurants, nor the women whom as a 
rule the foreigner has the opportunity to meet. 
They are the women who have helped us to absorb 
the 21,000,000 aliens who have entered America 
since the Civil War; the women who stood behind 
us when we fought out that war for four years, 
leaving a million men on the fields of battle; the 
women who in the realm of house-keeping, to come 
down to practical levels, have revolutionized these 
duties and turned a drudgery into an art as have 
no other women in the world. The best answer the 
American can make to the luxurious lawlessness of 
some of our women, is to point to the house-keep- 
ing and home-making of his compatriots, not only 
at home but right here in Germany. Fifty years 
ago it could not have been said, but to-day there is 
no doubt in my mind that American house-keeping 
is the best in the world. In comfort, in the smooth 
running of the household machinery, in good food 
and drink, perhaps in too lavish and too luxurious 
hospitality, we are nowadays almost in a class by 
ourselves in matters of housewifery. 

The English attitude of women toward men is 
somewhat that of comradeship, and once married 
the man's comfort is looked after with some care; 
the American attitude of women toward men, in 
the more luxurious circles, is often, I admit, that of 
a spoiled child toward a gift-bringing uncle, and she 
permits him tp worship her along the lines of a re- 

308 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 

stricted rubric; but in Germany the subordination, 
the unquestioning and unthinking adulation, the 
blind acceptance of inferiority have not only sof- 
tened the men but robbed the women of even suffi- 
cient independence to make them the helpmates that 
they try to be. There have been women of social 
and even political influence: Bettina von Arnim, 
Caroline Schlegel, Charlotte Stieglitz, Rahel Varn- 
hagen, and lately Frau Lebin, who seems to have 
been a soothing adjunct of the Foreign Office. It 
is rather as admirers than as executives that they 
shine. Their attitude toward the great Goethe, and 
his nonchalant polygamy toward them, is difficult 
for us to understand and approve. 

"The gentle Henrietta then, 
And a third Mary next did reign, 
And Joan and Jane and Andria; 
And then a pretty Thomasine, 
And then another Katherine, 
And then a long et cetera." 

No real man is a misogynist, for not to like wo* 
men is not to be a man. There are, however, many 
men, both in Germany and out of it, who greatly 
dislike sham women; that is, women who shirk 
their functional responsibilities. This form of dis- 
like is a healthy instinct. Women are given the 
greatest and most inspiring of all tasks: to make 
men; and a woman who cannot make a man, by 
giving birth to one, or by developing one as son or 
husband, has failed more deplorably even than a 
man who cannot make a living. This task of theirs 
constitutes a superiority impossible to deny or to 

309 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

overcome. A woman, therefore, who craves man's 
activities and standards is as foolish as though 
a wheat-field should long to be a bakery. Most 
healthy-minded men hold this view, though some of 
us may think that German men overemphasize it. 

The coarse sentimentality of the lower classes 
has been noted, but it is not confined to them. The 
premarital relations of all but the most cultured 
and experienced, are marked by a mawkish sweet- 
ness which is all the more noticeable in contrast with 
the dull routine of saving and slaving which fol- 
lows. She begins by being photographed sitting in 
her hero's lap, and ends by sitting on the less com- 
fortable chair to darn his socks and to tend his 
babies. There are women enthroned, and who de- 
serve to be, in Germany as in other countries; but 
taken in the mass, speaking in hundreds of thou- 
sands, it is not an inaccurate picture to say that the 
women are not taken seriously in Germany except 
as mothers and servants. 

The census of 19 10 shows that there are 32,040,- 
166 men in Germany and 32,885,827 women, or 
845,661 more women than men. The number of 
men in proportion to the number of women is 
steadily increasing in Germany, showing that the 
habits of the men are more and more feminine, that 
the state provides for them and protects them, and 
that the women take good care of them. 

In a virile state, where the men take risks, where 
they play hazardous games, where they travel and 
seek adventure, where they emigrate to seek new 
opportunities, the women will greatly outnumber 

310 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 

the men. The excess of females in England and 
Wales in 1871 was 594,000; in 1881, 694,000; in 
1 89 1, 896,000; in 191 1, 1,178,000. The United 
Kingdom has the largest surplus of women of 
leisure in the world, and just now they are taking 
advantage of their numerical superiority in the most 
delightful and comical feminine fashion. They are 
proving their right to assist in coercing others to 
obey the laws, by disobeying the laws themselves. 
By pouring vitriol on golf -greens, by pinning their 
defiance to these dishevelled greens with hair-pins, 
they propose to provoke the recalcitrant to recogni- 
tion of their right to pin their names to seats in the 
House of Commons. It is all so sweetly feminine, 
that the stranger is astonished to hear such women 
dubbed unwomanly. Pray, what could be more 
womanly in England, than to pin a protest to a golf- 
green with a hair-pin ! 

The German army, which is in itself a school of 
hygiene for the man, where the death-rate is the 
lowest of any army in Europe, and the many pro- 
visions for the state care of the population, all go 
to coddle the men and protect them. The various 
forms of labor insurance alone in Germany cost the 
state over $250,000 a day, and if we include the 
amount expended in compensation in all its forms, 
the yearly bill of the state for the care of its sick, in- 
jured and aged, amounts to nearly $170,000,000. 
No wonder that between the care of a grandmotherly 
state, and the attentions of a subservient woman- 
kind, the male population increases. I sometimes 
question whether there is not something of the hot- 

3ii 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

house culture about this male crop. Certainly con- 
sumption and other diseases are very wide-spread. 
A very detailed and careful investigation of certain 
forms of weakness is being made by our Rocke- 
feller Institute at this time, and if I am not mis- 
taken in the results of what these investigations 
have thus far disclosed, it will be found that Ger- 
many has her full share of rottenness to deal with. 
To those who care to corroborate these hints with 
facts I recommend the reading of certain recent 
numbers of the hygienic Rundschau, a German 
technical magazine of repute. , 

There is a lack of vitality and elasticity, a stodgy, 
plodding way of working, much indulgence in gre- 
garious eating and drinking, and very mild forms 
of exercise and holiday-making, comparatively little 
sport, almost no game-playing where boys and men 
hustle one another about as in foot-ball and polo, 
and very long hours of application, from the school- 
boy to the ministers of state, all of w r hich tend to 
and do produce a physical lack of alertness, vivacity, 
and audacity in the men of practically all classes. 

The way to see the people of a country is to 
stand by the hour in the large industrial towns and 
watch them as they go to and from their work; to 
watch them flocking in and out of railway stations, 
and at work in large numbers in the fields of 
Saxony, Silesia, and other parts of Prussia; to 
spend hours, and I admit that they are tedious 
hours, strolling through factories, ship-yards, mines, 
and offices, paying no attention to the talk of your 
guide, but studying the faces and physique of the 

312 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 

men and women. Having done this, an impartial 
observer is bound to remark that industrial and 
commercial Germany is taking a tremendous toll 
for the rapid progress she has made. It may be no 
worse here than elsewhere, but neither has the prob- 
lem of a healthy, happy, toiling population been sat- 
isfactorily solved here, though perhaps better here 
than elsewhere. I have heard the women and girls 
in factories singing at their work, but the bird is 
no less caged because it sings. 

Men who ought to know better set an example 
of long hours of confinement at their work which 
is quite unnecessary. They tell you with pride that 
they are at it from eight or nine in the morning till 
seven and often till later at night. That is some- 
thing that no sane man ought to be proud of. On 
investigation you find that in industrial and com- 
mercial circles, and in the offices of the state, men 
take two hours for luncheon and then return to 
work till nightfall. Two hours in the open air at 
the end of the day could be managed easily, but they 
do not want it. There is no vitality left for a game, 
for exercise, for a bath, and a change. 

They drug themselves with work, and slip away 
to the theatre, to a concert, to a Verein or circle, 
unwashed, ungroomed, and physically torpid, and 
the great mass of the population, high and low alike, 
outside the army officers, look it. 

The army officer's career is dependent upon his 
mental and physical vigor. The cylinder is quickly 
handed him and the helmet taken away if he grows 
too fat and too slow physically and mentally. There 

313 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

is no nepotism, no favoritism, and on reaching a 
certain rank he goes, if he falls below the standard 
required, and consequently he keeps himself fit. 
But a huge bureaucracy, with its stupid promotions 
by years and not by ability, with its government 
stroke, and its dangling pensions, positively breeds 
lassitude, laziness, and dulness. You may see it on 
every hand in government offices, in the railway and 
postal services, where men are evidently kept on not 
for their fitness but by the tyranny of the system. 
High officials admit as much. 

In the little state of Prussia the railways pay well 
and are well managed, but they are clogged to a cer- 
tain extent by inefficient and unnecessary employees, 
and were the system spread over the United States 
the chaos in a dozen years would be almost irrepa- 
rable, and even here the complaints are many and 
vigorous. Probably one male over twenty-five years 
of age out of every four is in government employ. 
This alone would account for the general air of 
lassitude which is one of the most noticeable fea- 
tures of German life. The Germans as a whole are 
beginning to look tired. It is a German, not an 
Italian or a Frenchman, the philosopher Nietzsche, 
who writes : " Seit es Menschen giebt, hat der 
Mensch sich zu wenig gefreut; das allein ist unsere 
Erbsunde." 

There has been a great change in the status of 
women in the last twenty-five years. The apo- 
phthegm of Pericles, or rather of Thucydides, " that 
woman is best who is least spoken of among men, 
either for good or evil," is not so rigidly enforced. 

314 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 

Increased wealth throughout Germany has left the 
German woman more leisure from the drudgery of 
the home. She is not so wholly absorbed by the 
duties of nurse, cook, and house-maid as she once 
was. But even to-day her economies and her ability 
to keep her house with little outside assistance are 
amazing. Some of the most delightful meals I have 
taken, have been in professional households, where 
small incomes made it necessary that wife and 
daughters should do most of the work. 

The German professor has his faults, but in his 
own simple home, the work of the day behind him, 
his family about him at his well-filled but not luxu- 
rious board, with some member of the family not un- 
likely to be an accomplished musician and with his 
own unrivalled store of learning at your service, 
when he raises his glass to you, filled with his best, 
with a smile and a hearty " Prosit/' he is hard to 
beat as a host, to my thinking. Perhaps there is 
nothing like overindulgence to make one crave 
simplicity, and no doubt this accounts for the fact 
that the really great ones of earth are satisfied and 
happy with enough, and abhor too much. 

They tell me that the Dienstmddchen is no longer 
what she used to be, but to my untutored eye her 
duties still seem to be as comprehensive as those of 
a Sioux squaw, and her performances unrivalled. 
As is to be expected, Germany is not blessed with 
trained servants. They are helpers rather than pro- 
fessional servants. In the scores of houses, public 
and private, where I have been a guest, only in one 
or two had the servants more than an alphabetical 

315 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

knowledge of what was due to one's clothes and 
shoes. The servants are rigidly protected by the 
state : they must have so much time off, they cannot 
be dismissed without weeks of warning, and they 
themselves carry books with their moral and pro- 
fessional biographies therein, which are always open 
to the inspection of the police; and they must all be 
insured. 

In many towns, and cities too, there are hospitals 
and bands of nurses who for a small annual pay- 
ment undertake to take over and care for a sick ser- 
vant. If the doctor prescribes a " cure " for your 
servant, away she goes at the expense of the state to 
be taken care of. Wages are very small as compared 
with ours. Ten dollars a month for a cook, five for a 
house-maid, ten for a man-servant, forty to fifty for 
a chauffeur, arid of course more in the larger and 
more luxurious establishments; though a chef who 
serves dinners for forty and fifty in an official 
household I know is content with twenty dollars a 
month. A nursery governess can be had for twelve, 
and a well-educated English governess for twenty 
dollars a month. Even these wages are higher than 
ten years ago. To be more explicit, in a small house- 
hold where three servants are kept the cook receives 
30 marks, the maid-servant 25 marks, and the 
nursery governess 35 marks a month. In the house- 
hold of an official of some means the man-servant 
receives 45 marks, the cook 30 marks, and the maid 
servant 30 marks a month. When dinners or other 
entertainments are given, outside help is called in. 
In the household of a rich industrial, whose family 

316 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 

consists of himself, wife, and four children, the 
man-servant receives 80 marks, the chauffeur 200, 
the cook 45, the lady's maid 35, the house-maid 25, 
kitchen-maid 12, and the governess 30 marks a 
month. 

I carry away with me delightful pictures of Ger- 
man households, big, little, and medium ; and though 
it dpes not fit in nicely with my main argument, 
households whose mistresses were patterns of what 
a chatelaine should be. But I must leave that loop- 
hole for the critics, for I am trying only to tell the 
truth and to be fair, and not to be scientific or to 
bolster up a thesis. 

I can see the big castle, centuries old, with its 
rambling buildings winging away from it on every 
side, and in the court-yard its regal-looking mistress 
positively garlanded with her dozen children. There 
is no sign of the decadence of the aristocracy here. 
We sit down twenty or more every day at the family 
luncheon. Tutors and governesses are at every 
turn. A French abbe, as silken in manner and speech 
as his own soutane, bowls over all my prejudices of 
creed and custom, as I watch him rule with the 
lightest of hands and the softest of voices a brood 
of termagant small boys; to turn from this to a 
game of billiards, and from that to the Merry 
Widow waltz on the piano, that we may dance. An 
aide-de-camp trained in India and a French abbe, I 
am convinced that these are the apotheosis of lux- 
ury in a large household. My Protestant brethren 
would, I am sure, throw their prejudices to the 
winds could they spend an evening with my friend, 

317 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Monsieur TAbbe! Nor Erasmus, nor Luther, nor 
Calvin would have had the heart to burn him. He 
is just as good a fellow as we are, knows far more, 
can turn his hand to anything from photography to 
the driving of a stubborn pony, knows his world as 
few know it, and yet is inviolably not of it. I have 
chatted with Jesuit priests teaching our Western 
Indians; I have travelled with a preaching friar in 
Italy on his round of sermonizing; I have seen them 
in South America, in India, China, and Japan, and 
I recognize and acclaim their self-denying prowess, 
but no one of them was a more dangerous mission- 
ary than my last-named friend among them, Mon- 
sieur T Abbe ! 

" For ever through life the Cure goes 

With a smile on his kind old face — 
With his coat worn bare, and his straggling hair, 
And his green umbrella-case." 

There was a profusion at this castle, a hearti- 
ness of welcome, a patriarchal attitude toward the 
countless servants and satellites, an acreage of roam- 
ing space in the buildings, that smacked of the 
feudalism back to which both the castle and the 
family dated. How many Englishmen or Amer- 
icans who sniff at German civilization ever see any- 
thing of the inside of German homes? Very few, 
I should judge, from the lame talk and writing on 
the subject. Let us go from this mediaeval setting 
for modern comfort to a smaller establishment. 
Here a miniature Germania, with blue eyes and 
golden hair, presides, looking like a shaft of sun- 
light in front of you as she leads the way about the 

318 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 

paths of her gloomy forest. In these, and in not a 
few other houses, there is little luxury, no waste, a 
certain Spartan air of training, but abundance of 
what is necessary and a cheery and frank wel- 
come. 

I sometimes think the Germans themselves lose 
much by their rather overdeveloped tendency to 
meet not so often in one another's homes as in a 
neutral place: a restaurant, a garden, a Verein or 
circle, of which there is an interminable number. 
You certainly get to know a man best and at his 
best in his own home, and you never get to know a 
wife and a mother out of that environment; for a 
woman is even more dependent than a man upon the 
sympathetic atmosphere that frames her. I should 
be, after my experience, and I am, the last person in 
the world to say that the Germans are not hospita- 
ble; but there is much less visiting even among 
themselves, and much less of constant reception of 
strangers in their homes, than with us. Habit, lack 
of wealth, lack of trained servants, and a certain 
proud shyness, and in some cases indifference and 
a lack of vitality which welcomes the trouble of be- 
ing host, account for this. No doubt, too, the old 
habit of economy remains even when there is no 
longer the same necessity for it, and saving and 
gayety do not go well together. In Geldsachen hort 
die Gemiithlichkeit auf. 

I should be sorry to spoil my picture by the over- 
emphasis of details. The reader will not see what 
I have intended to paint, if he gets only an im- 
pression of caution, of economy, of sordidness and 

319 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

fatigue. No nation that gives birth to an untrans- 
latable word like Gemuthlichkeit can be without that 
characteristic. The English words " home " and 
" comfort," the French word-" esprit," and the Ger- 
man word Gemuthlichkeit have no exact equivalents 
in other languages. This in itself is a sure sign of 
a quality in the nation which bred the word. The 
difficulty lies in the fact that another language is 
another life. s 

The Germans are not cheerful as we are cheer- 
ful; they are not happy as we are happy; they are 
not free as we are free; they are not polite as we 
are polite; they are not contented as we are con- 
tented; and no one for a moment who is even an 
amateur observer and an amateur philologist com- 
bined would claim that the three words, love and 
amour and Liebe mean the same thing. No word in 
the English language is used so often from the 
pulpit as the word love, but this cannot be said of 
the use of amour in France or of Liebe in Germany. 
Nations pour themselves into the tiny moulds of 
words and give us statuettes of themselves. The 
Anglo-Saxon, the Latin, and the Teuton have filled 
these three words with a certain vague philosophy 
of themselves, a hazy composite photograph of 
themselves. No one writer or painter, no one in- 
cident, no one tragedy, no one day or year of history 
has done this. To us, love is the coldest, cleanest, 
as it is perhaps the most loyal of the three. V amour 
sounds to us seductive, enticing, often indeed little 
more than lust embroidered to make a cloak for 
ennui. Liebe is to us friendly, soft, childlike. 

320 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 

The nations of the earth, close as they are to- 
gether in these days, are worlds apart in thought. 
Each builds its life in words, and the words are 
as little alike as in the days of Babel; and thus 
it comes about that we misunderstand one another. 
We translate one another only into our own lan- 
guage, and understand one another as little as be- 
fore, because we only know one another in trans- 
lations, and the best of the life of each nation re- 
mains and always will remain untranslatable. No 
one has ever really translated the Greek lyrics 
or the choruses of ^Eschylus, or the incomparable 
songs of Heine. Who could dream of putting the 
best of Robert Louis Stevenson into German, or 
Kipling's rollicking ballads of soldier life into 
Spanish, or Walter Pater into Dutch, or Edgar 
Allan Poe into Russian! The one language com- 
mon to us all, music, tells as many tales as there are 
men to hear. Each melody melts into the blackness 
or the brightness of the listener's soul and becomes 
a thousand melodies instead of one. What does 
the moaning monotony of a Korean love-song mean 
to the westerner, or what does the Swan song mean 
to the Korean? Only God knows. We can never 
translate one nation into the language of another; 
our best is only an interpretation, and we must al- 
ways meet the criticism that we have failed with the 
reply that we had never hoped to succeed. We are 
forever explaining ourselves even in our own small 
circles; how can we dare to suggest even, that we 
have made one people to speak clearly in the lan- 
guage of another? The best we can do is to give a 

3 21 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

kindly, a good-humored, and, at all times and above 
all things, a charitable interpretation. Information, 
facts, are merely the raw material of culture; sym- 
pathy is its subtlest essence. 

There is a world of good humor, of cheerfulness, 
of contentment, of domestic peace and happiness 
in Germany. There are courtesy, politeness, even 
grand manners here and there. But these words 
mean one thing to them, another thing to us, and it 
is that I am striving, feebly enough to be sure, to 
make clear. May I beg the reader and the student 
to follow me with this point clearly in mind ? While 
I am outlining with these painful details that 
their ways are not as our ways, I am not denounc- 
ing their ways, but merely offering matter for con- 
sideration and comparison. 

A nation is most often punished for its faults by 
the exaggeration of its qualities, and if, as it seems 
to me, Germany suffers like the rest of us in this re- 
spect, it is none of my doing. It will be my failure 
and the reader's failure, if we do not profit by 
watching these qualities in ourselves, and in others 
festering into faults. Woman's position and ambi- 
tions, the home, the amusements, and the satisfac- 
tions of life, are very different in Germany from 
ours. I note these as facts, not as inferiorities. I 
note, too, that in Germany, as elsewhere, Hegel was 
profoundly right in his dictum, that everything car- 
ried to its extreme becomes its contrary. Too much 
caution may become a positive menace to safety ; too 
much orderliness may result in individual incapacity 
for self-control; just as liberty rots into license, and 

322 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 

demos descends to a crown and sceptre and tyranny. 
I am merely calling attention to this great law of 
national development, that the exaggeration of even 
fine qualities is the road to the punishment of our 
faults, in Germany, as in every other nation under 
the sun. 

It is only when you have had a peep into a small 
farmer's house in Saxony, into the artisans' houses 
in the busy Rhine and Westphalia country; spent a 
night in a peasant's house and stable, for they are 
under the same roof, in the mountains of the South; 
and visited the greater establishments of the large 
land-holder and the less pretentious houses of the 
gentleman farmer, and the country houses, big and 
little, in all parts of Germany, that you get anything 
of the real flavor of Germany. 

If, as Burke says, it is impossible to indict a whole 
nation, it is even more difficult to fit a people with 
a few discriminating and really enlightening adjec- 
tives. One word I dare to apply to them all, though 
I know well how different they are in the north and 
south and east and west, as diversified indeed as any 
nation in the world, and that is the word patient. 
They can stand longer, sit longer, eat longer, drink 
longer, work linger hours, and dream longer, and 
dawdle longer than any people except the Orientals. 
This custom may date back to far distant times. Sit- 
ting, in the Greek view, was a posture of supplica- 
tion (Odyssey, XIV, 29-31). The emperor himself 
sets the example. He is an indefatigable stander, if 
I may coin the word, and on horseback he can ap- 
parently spend the day and night without incon- 

3 2 3 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

venience. Their patient quarry work in archaeology 
and in comparative philology laid the foundations 
for the new history-writing of Heeren and Momm- 
sen; and their scholarship to-day is still of the dig- 
ging kind. They seldom produce a J ebb, a Jowett, a 
Verrall, and never that type of scholar, wit and 
poet combined, a Lowell or an Arthur Hugh Clough. 
Indeed, with a suspicious self -consciousness the Ger- 
man professional mind inclines to be contemptuous 
of any learning that is not unpalatably dry. What 
men can read with enjoyment cannot be learning, 
they maintain. ; 

I have visited half a dozen hospitals, and on one 
or two occasions been present at an operation by a 
famous surgeon. It is evident from the bearing of 
patients, nurses, and students that they are dealing 
with a less highly strung population than ours. In- 
deed, the surgeons who know both countries tell me 
that here in Germany they have more endurance of 
this phlegmatic kind. They suffer more like animals. 
Their patience reaches down to the very roots of 
their being. 

On that delightful big fountain, in that para- 
dise of fountains, Nuremberg, the statues of the 
electors and citizens picture men who were un- 
troubled and cheerful, slow-moving, contented, pa- 
tient; while the little figures on the guns are posi- 
tively jolly. The only mournful figure on the whole 
fountain is a man with a book on his knees teaching 
a child. He is pallid, even in bronze, and his face 
is lined as he muses over the problem that has 
stumped the wisest of us : how to make a man by 

3 2 4 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 

stuffing a child with books ! It cannot be done, but 
we follow this will-o'-the-wisp through the swamps 
of experience with the pitiable enthusiasm of de- 
spair. 

Only liberty can make a man, and she is such a 
costly mistress that with our increasing hordes of 
candidates for independence we cannot afford her ; 
so we go on fooling the people with mechanical ed- 
ucation. But even this figure is patient! 

The Germans are patient even with their food. 
What would become of them without the goose, the 
pig, the calf, and the duck, that meagre alimentary 
quartette? The country is white with home-raised 
geese, and yet they imported 8,337,708 in 1910, and 
7,236,581 in 191 1. 

One of their most charming bits of classic art is 
the famous miniature statue of the Gooseman; and 
the real name of the great Gutenberg, who, by his 
invention of printing, did more than any other mor- 
tal to make it easy for the human race to acquire the 
anserine mental habits, and the anserine moral char- 
acteristics, was Gansfleisch ! 

The goose is really the national bird of the Ger- 
man people. You eat tons of goose, and then you 
sleep beneath the feathers. The goose first nourishes 
you and then protects your digestion. The extra- 
ordinary make-up of the German bed must be laid 
to the door of the guilty goose. The pillows are so 
soft that your head is ever sinking, never at rest. 
Instead of easily applied blankets, that you can adapt 
to the temperature, you are given a great cloud of 
feathers, sewn in a balloon-like bag, which floats upon 

325 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

you according to your degree of restlessness, and 
leaves you for the floor, when in stupid sleepiness 
you endeavor to protect your whole person at once 
with its flimsy and wanton formlessness. As a rule 
the bed is built up at the head so that you are con- 
tinually sliding down, down under the goose feath- 
ers, your nose and mouth are soon covered, and who 
can breathe with his toes! 

They accumulate comfort very slowly. The 
wages are small and the satisfactions are small. On 
the street-cars the conductor is grateful for a tip 
of five pfennigs, and his daily customers are handed 
from the car-steps and respectfully saluted in return 
for this tiny douceur. When you dine or lunch at a 
friend's house you are expected to leave something 
in the expectant palm of his servant who sees you 
out. 

Women carry small parcels of food to the theatre, 
to the tea and beer gardens, and thus save the small 
additional expense. Many a time have I seen these 
thrifty housewives pocket the sugar and the zwie- 
backs and Brodchen left over. In the hotels, soap, 
paper, and common conveniences of the kind are 
taken, so I am told, not, I maintain, as a theft, but as 
an economy. We are in the habit of carrying our 
small change loose in a trousers pocket, but the Ger- 
man almost without exception carries even his ten 
and five pfennig pieces carefully in a purse. Out- 
side many of the big shops is placed a row of niches 
where you may leave your unfinished cigar till you 
return. The economy thus illustrated shows a cer- 
tain disregard, of a not altogether agreeable chance 

326 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 

of interchangeability, that might even be dangerous 
to health. On the other hand, it is a wise precau- 
tion that marks beer-glasses and beer- jugs with a 
line, to show just how much beer you are entitled to. 
This puts the foam-stealing vendor at your mercy. 

The entertainments, dinners, luncheons, teas, ex- 
cept among the small cosmopolitan companies who 
do not count as examples of German manners and 
customs, are very prolonged affairs. There is much 
standing about. At ten o'clock, having dined at 
half -past seven, beer, tea, coffee, sandwiches are 
brought in, and you begin the gastronomies over 
again on a smaller scale. There is no occasion when 
eating and drinking are not part of the programme. 
If you go to the play or the opera you may eat and 
drink there; if you go for a walk the goal is not a 
bath and a rub-down, but beer or chocolate and' 
cakes. 

I am not sure that there is not something in the 
theory that their soil has less iron in it, being so in- 
tensively cultivated, and that our food is conse- 
quently stronger than theirs; at all events, they eat 
more frequently and more copiously than we do. It 
seems to me that both the men and the women show 
it in their faces and figures. They are a heavy, 
puffy, tumbling lot after forty; and with my pre- 
possessions on the subject I am inclined to put it 
down to irregular eating, to too much eating of soft 
and sweet food, too much drinking of fattening 
beverages, and much, much too little regular exer- 
cise, and to the fact that they are still infants in the 
matter of personal hygiene. Dressing-gowns, slip- 

327 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

pers, proper care of the teeth and hair, regular ablu- 
tions, changing of clothes, all these dozens of helps 
to health are patiently neglected. It is just as 
troublesome to take care of yourself, to groom your 
person, to be regular in your habits, and restrained 
and careful in your diet as to take proper care of a 
horse or a dog. It shows a rather high grade of 
persistent prowess in a man just to keep himself fit, 
to keep himself in working or playing health. With- 
out the drilling they receive in the army in these mat- 
ters, one wonders where this population would be. 

The doggedness, the patience of the German is 
notable, but the alertness, vivacity, the energy easily 
on tap, these are lacking both among the men and 
the women, and, as it seems to me, for these easily 
apparent reasons. There are more rest-cures, rheu- 
matism, heart, liver, kidney, anaemic cures in Ger- 
many, and to suit all purses, than in all Anglo-Sax- 
ondom combined, even if subject territories are in- 
cluded. In Saxony alone, which is not renowned 
for its cures, the number of visitors at Augustus 
Bad, Bad Elster, Hermanns Bad, Schandau, and 
some seven others has increased from 13,000 ten 
years ago to 30,000 in 19 10. 

Between 1900 and 1909, while the population of 
Germany increased 15 per cent., the days of sickness 
in the insurance funds increased 59 per cent, and the 
expenditure 95 per cent. Some alterations were 
made in the law between those years permitting a 
certain extension of the days of sickness, but an N 
accurate percentage may be taken between the years 
1905 and 1909. During those years the population 

328 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 

increased by 7 per cent., the days of sickness by 17 
<per cent., and the expenditure out of the sick-funds 
by 32 per cent. The total cost of sickness insurance 
in 1900 was $42,895,000 and in 1909 $83,640,000. 
What will happen in Great Britain when sickness 
insurance comes into thorough working order is 
worthy of caricature. The way my Irish friends 
will play that game fills me with joy. It is an abomi- 
nable harness to put on the Anglo-Saxon, and he 
has my very best wishes if he refuses to wear it 
tamely. It is only another piece of tired legislation 
that solves nothing. Even Germany would be a 
thousand times better off without it. This attempt- 
ing to make pills and powders take the place of love 
one another, is merely the politician sneaking away 
from his problem. Of course, it is impossible to tell 
how many people are sick by being paid for it, prob- 
ably not a small number. We all have mornings 
when we would turn over and stick to our pillows 
if we were sure of payment for doing so. The Ger- 
man apparently is the only person in the world 
who is happy, cegrescit medendo. The Germans keep 
going, we must all admit that, but at a slower pace, 
with less energy to spare, and with far less robust 
love of life. 

If the men are patient, the women must be more 
so, and they are. The marriage service still reads : 
" He shall be your ruler, and you shall be his vas- 
sal. ,, The women are not only patient with all that 
requires patience of the men, but they are patient 
with the men besides, a heavy additional burden 
from the American point of view. Beethoven 

3^9 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

writes : " Resignation ! Welch' elendes Hiilfsmittel ! 
Und doch bleibt es mir das einzige iibrige." They 
take resignation for granted as we never do. 

Some ten years ago only, was formed the Wo- 
men's Suffrage League in Germany. It was neces- 
sary to organize in the free city of Hamburg, because 
women were not allowed either to form or to join 
political unions in Prussia ! It is only within a very 
few years that the girls' higher schools have been in- 
creased and cared for in due proportion to the 
schools provided for the higher education of the 
boys. The first girls' rowing club was organized at 
Cassel in 191 1. Even now as I write there are pro- 
tests and petitions from the male masters against 
women teachers in the higher positions of even these 
schools. In the discussions as to the proper sub- 
jects to be taught to the girls, who in 19 12 began at- 
tending the newly constituted continuation schools 
for girls in Berlin, there is a strong party who argue 
that all of them should be taught only house-keeping 
and the duties pertaining thereto. To the great ma- 
jority of German men, children and the kitchen are 
and ought to be the sole preoccupations of women, 
with occasional church attendance thrown in. 

There have been enormous changes in the place 
women hold in the German world in the last thirty 
years. The Red Cross organization of the women 
throughout Germany is admirable and as complete 
and efficient as the army that it is intended to help ; 
one can hardly say more. There are many private 
charities in Berlin and other cities, managed entirely 
by women, and doing excellent and sensible work; 

330 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 

such as the kindergartens, the Pestalozzi-Froebel- 
haus for example, where four hundred children are 
taken care of daily and fifteen thousand ten-pfennig 
meals provided, besides classes for the young women 
students under the supervision of the Berliner Ver- 
ein fur Volkserziehung, with courses in the ele- 
ments of law and politics and other matters likely 
to concern them in their activities as teachers, nurses, 
or charity helpers ; the invalid-kitchens ; the societies 
for looking after young girls; the work in the Tem- 
perance League; the Lette-Verein, one of the most 
sane and sensible institutions in the world for the 
training of girls and young women, where they turn 
out some two thousand girls a year trained in house- 
wifely economy; the wonderful and pitiful colony 
at Bielefeld, founded by one of Germany's greatest 
organizers and saints, Pastor Bodelschwing, and 
now carried on by his equally able son, and aided 
largely by the sympathy and resources of women. 
Only another Saint Francis could have imagined, 
and produced, and loved into usefulness such an in- 
stitution. 

The summer colonies, called gartenlauben colo- 
nies, where the outlying and unused land on the out- 
skirts of the cities is divided up into small parcels 
and rented for a nominal sum to the poorer working 
people of the city, constitute a most sensible form of 
philanthropy. You see them, each named by its 
proprietor, with a flag flying, with the light barriers 
dividing them, and with the small huts erected as a 
shelter, where flowers and fruits and vegetables are 
grown, often adding no small amount to income, and 

33i 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

in every case offering the soundest kind of work and 
recreation. These colonies were started by a woman 
in France, and the idea worked its way through Bel- 
gium to Germany, and they are now supported and 
helped by the direct interest of the Empress. The 
woman who put this scheme into operation ought to 
have a monument ! At Charlottenburg, a suburb of 
Berlin, on a plot lent by the city, there are thirteen 
of these colonies divided into over a thousand plots. 
There are three-quarters of a million women in 
Germany who are independent owners and heads 
of establishments of different kinds, and some ten 
million who are bread-winners. Of the increase in 
the number of women students I have written in an- 
other chapter, and of their increasing participation 
in the political, economical, literary, and scholarly 
life of the nation there are many examples. Once 
or twice I have even heard them speak in public, 
and speak well, while if my memory serves me, this 
was practically unknown in my university days here. 
The problem of domestic apprenticeship is also be- 
ing worked out by the women of Germany. In 
Munich, in Frank furt-am-Main and elsewhere this 
most difficult and delicate question is being partially 
answered at least. Girls are apprenticed to families 
needing them, under the supervision of a committee 
of women. The girls and their families agree to cer- 
tain terms, and the families agree also to teach them 
household duties, give them proper food, eight hours' 
sleep, their Sunday out, and so on. The German 
women's societies who have thus boldly tackled this 
problem are plucky indeed, and prove easily enough 

332 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 

that there is a large and growing body of women in 
Germany, who have minds and wills of their own 
and great executive ability. 

Let me suggest to some of our idle women that 
they pay a visit to the Hausfrauenbund at Frank- 
fort and the Frauenverein-Arbeiterinnenheim at Mu- 
nich, before they pass judgment upon this chapter. 
For I should be sorry to leave the impression that all 
the women of Germany are listless, oppressed, and 
without any feeling of civic responsibility. 

All these things have been accomplished by women 
in Germany with far less sympathy from the men 
than they receive in America or in England. Cato 
wrote of women's suffrage : " Pray what will they 
not assail, if they carry their point? Call to mind 
all the principles governing them by which your 
ancestors have held the presumption of women in 
check, and made them subject to their husbands. 
... As soon as they have begun to be your equals 
they will be your superiors/ \ It is an older 
story than the unread realize, this of the rights of 
women. The bulk of Germany's male population 
still hold to Cato's view. It is not so much that they 
are antagonistic, except in the case of the teachers, 
where the women have become active competitors; 
they are in their patient way impervious. Nor can 
it be said that any very large number of the women 
themselves are eager for more rights; rather are 
they becoming restless because they receive so little 
consideration. 

Their pleasures are simple and restricted, regular 
attendance at the theatre, at concerts, an occasional 

333 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

dinner at a restaurant to celebrate an anniversary, 
excursions with the whole family to a beer restaurant 
of a Sunday, and the endless meeting together for 
reading, sewing, and gossip- — no German woman ap- 
parently but what belongs to a verein or circle, meet- 
ing, say, once a week. 

The women and the men are gregarious. Vce soli 
is the motto of the race. They love to take their 
pleasures in crowds, and I am not sure that this 
does not dull the enthusiasm for personal rights and 
gratifications, and for individual supremacy and dig- 
nity. It is rare to find a German who would sub- 
scribe to Andrew Marvell's misognynist lines: 

" Two paradises are in one 
To live in Paradise alone." 

It is typical of this love of being together that an 
independent member of the Reichstag, owing al- 
legiance to no party, is called a Wilde , and this same 
word Wilde, or wild man, is applied to the student 
at the university who belongs to no corps or associa- 
tion of students. This love of being together, of 
touching elbows on all occasions, makes them more 
easily led and ruled. They hate the isolation neces- 
sary for independence and revolt. 

Of the relations between men and women I long 
ago came to the conclusion that this is a subject best 
left to the scientific explorer. It is, however, open 
to the casual observer to comment upon the mon- 
strous percentage of illegitimacy in Berlin, 20 per 
cent, or one child out of every five, born out of 
wedlock; 14 per cent, in Bavaria; and 10 per cent. 

334 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 

for the whole empire. This alone tells a sad tale 
of the attitude of the men and women toward one 
another. There is a long journey ahead of the wo- 
men who propose to lift their sisters on to a plane 
above the animals in this respect. In the matter of 
divorce Prussia comes fourth in the list of European 
nations. Norway, with the cheapest and easiest, 
and at the same time the wisest, divorce law in the 
world, has almost the lowest percentage of divorce. 
In 1 910 there were 390 divorces out of 400,000 
existing marriages, of which 14,600 had taken place 
that year. The percentage is thus only about 2% 
per year. The total per 100,000 of the population 
in Switzerland is 43; in France 33; in Denmark 
2J\ and in Prussia 21. In industrial Saxony there 
are 32 and in Catholic Bavaria 13. The number of 
married people in Germany according to the last 
census shows an increase, the number of bachelors 
and widowed persons a decrease. Since 1871 the 
number of married persons has increased by 2 per 
cent. The birth rate shows a proportional decline. 
The problem that bothers all social economists is 
to the fore in Germany as elsewhere, for the people 
between sixty and seventy years of age number 14.- 
65 per cent, of the population, while the young 
people under ten number only 11. 12, and those be- 
tween twenty and thirty 10.93 P er cent - The birth 
rate therefore shows the same tendency as in 
France, England, and America. A recent investiga- 
tion on a small scale seems to show that bureaucracy 
has a certain influence here. Of 300 officials ques- 
tioned, only 10, or 3 y 2 per thousand, had more than 

335 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

two children. It is not an impossible, but certainly 
a laughable, outcome of state interference carried 
too far, should it result in the state's becoming an 
incubator for the unfit, in a country where the pen- 
sions for officers and employees of the state have 
risen from 50,000,000 marks in 1900 to 111,000,- 
000 marks in 191 1. 

Even in higher circles in Germany there is a gush- 
ing idealism about the relations of the sexes. In 
their songs and sayings as well as in their mythol- 
ogy, there is a laudation of love that is overstim- 
ulating. The lines of that inconsequential philoso- 
pher, that irresponsible moralist, that dreamy puri- 
tan, Emerson, 

" Give all to love ; 
Obey thy heart; 
Friends, kindred, days, 
Estate, good fame, 
Plans, credit and the Muse — ■ 
Nothing refuse " 

would be warmly praised in Germany. 

" I could not love thee, dear, so much 
Loved I not honour more" 

are lines more to our taste. Even love should have 
a deal of toughness of fibre in it to be worth much. 
I must leave it to my readers to guess what I think 
of the German woman; indeed, it is of little con- 
sequence what any individual opinion is, if mat- 
ter is given for the formation of an opinion by 
others. Truth cannot afford to be either gallant or 
merciless. There are women in Germany whom no 

336 



THE DISTAFF SIDE 

man can know without respect, without admira- 
tion, without affection. There are the blue eyes, 
sunny hair, peach-bloom complexions of the north; 
there are the dark-eyed, black-haired, heavy-browed 
women of the Black Forest; there is often a Quak- 
erish elegance of figure and apparel to be seen on 
the streets of the cities, and from time to time one 
sees a real Germania, big of frame, bold of brow, 
fearless of glance — patet deal 

But we can none of us be quite sure of the im- 
partiality of our taste in such matters. Our baby 
fingers and our baby lips were taught to love a 
certain type of beauty. Our mothers wove a web 
of admiration and devotion from which no real man 
ever escapes ; our maturer passions lashed themselves 
to an image from which we can never wholly break 
away; our sins and sorrows and adventures have 
been drenched in the tears of eyes that are like no 
other eyes ; and consequently the man who could pre- 
tend to cold neutrality would be a reprobate. 

The German looks to Germany, the Englishman 
to England, the Frenchman to France, as do you 
and I to America, for 

"The face that launched a thousand ships 
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium." 



337 



VIII 
"OHNE ARMEE KEIN DEUTSCHLAND " 

OF every one hundred inhabitants of Ger- 
many, including men, women, and chil- 
dren, one is a soldier. There are, roughly, 
65,000,000 inhabitants and 650,000 soldiers. 

The American army is about equal in numbers 
to the corps of officers of Germany's army and 
navy. To the American, as to almost every other 
foreigner, the German army means only one thing : 
war. We all hear one thing : 

" And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far 
Ancestral voices prophesying war." 

I believe this is a half-truth, and dangerous ac- 
cordingly. This army has been in existence for 
over forty years, and has done far more to keep 
the peace than any other one factor in Europe, 
except, perhaps, the British navy. 

The German army protects the German people 
not only from external foes, but from internal 
diseases. It is the greatest school of hygiene in 
the world, on account of its sound teaching, the 
devotion, skill, and industry of its officers, the num- 
ber of its pupils, and its widely distributed lessons 
and influence. 

338 



THE GERMAN ARMY 

Culture taken by itself is livery business, and 
when combined with much beer and wine drinking, 
irregular eating and a disinclination for regular ex- 
ercise, culture becomes a positive menace to health. 
Of this danger to the German, their own great man 
Bismarck spoke in the Abgeordnetenhaus in 1881 : 
" Bei uns Deutschen wird mit wenigem so viel 
Zeit totgeschlagen wie mit Biertrinken. Wer beim 
Friihschoppen sitzt oder beim Abendschoppen und 
gar noch dazu raucht und Zeitungen liest, halt sich 
voll ausreichend beschaftigt und geht mit gutem 
Gewissen nach Haus in dem Bewusstsein, das Sein- 
ige geleistet zu haben. ,, 

("The Germans waste more time drinking beer 
than in any other way. The man who sits with his 
morning or his afternoon glass of beer beside him, 
and who, in addition, smokes and reads the news- 
papers, considers that he is much occupied, and goes 
home with a good conscience, feeling that he has 
fully done his duty.") 

" Jeden Feind besiegt der Deutsche, 
Nur den Durst besiegt er nicht." 

Which I permit myself to translate into these two 
lines : 

"The German conquers every foe, 
Except his thirst, that lays him low." 

Even if the German army were not necessary as 
a policeman, it could not be spared as a physician 
by the German people. It is to be forever kept in 
mind that the German is brought up on rules; the 

339 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

American and the Englishman on emergencies. 
Emergencies provide a certain discipline of them- 
selves, and our philosophy of civilization leaves it 
to the individual to get his own discipline from his 
own emergencies. We call it the formation of 
character. The German thinks this method a hap- 
hazard method, and burdens men with rules, and 
the army is Germany's greatest school-master along 
those line. We are inclined to think that it results 
in a machine-made citizen. 

There are three classes of men who pick up the 
bill of fare of life and look it over: Civilization's 
paralyzed ones, with no appetite, who can choose 
what they will without regard to the prices; the 
cautious, those with appetite but who are hampered 
in their choice by the prices; the bold, those with 
appetite and audacity, who rely upon their courage 
to satisfy the landlord. The Germans are only just 
beginning to look over the world's bill of fare in 
this last lordly fashion, to which some of us have 
long been accustomed. I see no reason why they 
should not do so, though I see clearly enough the 
suspicion and jealousy it creates. 

They have been swathed in " Forbidden " so long 
that their taste for daring was late in coming. Our 
colonies, small wars, punitive expeditions, and con- 
trol over neighboring territories are not planned for 
far ahead; but the exigencies of the situations are 
met by the remedies and solutions of men fitted by 
their training in school, in sport, in social and po- 
litical life for just such work, and who are the more 
efficient the more they do of it. We are inclined 

340 



THE GERMAN ARMY 

to do things, and to think them out the day after; 
while the German thinks them out the week before, 
and then sometimes hesitates to do them at all. 

The German goes more slowly, perhaps more 
successfully, in commercial and industrial under- 
takings, but always with a chart in front of him, 
a pair of spectacles on his nose, and with no desire 
to take chances. 

In the rough-and-tumble world, the American 
and the Englishman went ahead the faster; in a 
more orderly world, and commerce, industry, and 
war are all far more scientific or orderly than of 
yore, the German has come into his own and goes 
ahead very fast. He has not made friends and sup- 
porters as have the other two: first, because he is 
a new-comer; and also, I believe, because human 
nature, even when it is not adventurous itself, loves 
adventure, and has a liking for the man who is a 
law unto himself. Indeed, the Germans themselves 
have a sneaking fondness for such a one. At any 
rate there is far more imitation of American and 
English ways in Germany, than of German man- 
ners, customs, and methods in America or in En- 
gland. 

" Experiment is not sufficient,'' writes Theo- 
phrastus von Hohenheim, called Paracelsus ; " ex- 
perience must verify what can be accepted or not ac- 
cepted; knowledge is experience. ,, For the mo- 
ment, but it is probably not for long, we have the 
advantage in the knowledge bred of experience. 

The German comes from the forest, loves the 
forest. " Kein Volk ist so innig mit seinem Wald 

34i 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

erwachsen wie das Deutsche, keines liebt den Wald 
so sehr." (" No nation has grown up so at one 
with its forests as have the Germans; no other na- 
tion love9 its forests as do they.") He walks, and 
meditates, and sings in the forest, and nowadays 
goes to the forest with his skis, his snow-shoes, and 
his sled. Our great games, are, many of them, per- 
sonal conflicts, and attended by some personal risk, 
and demanding both discipline in preparing for 
them and severe discipline in the playing. Our 
love of the aleatory, of betting our belongings, our 
powers, our persons even, against life, is not com- 
monly alive in Germany. The Germans are only 
just emerging into safety and confidence in them- 
selves, and beginning cautiously to agree with us 
that 

"He either fears his fate too much, 
Or his deserts are small, 
That dares not put it to the touch 
To gain or lose it all." 

From these sombre forests came a race who still 
find it lonely to be alone, and they herd together 
still for safety as of old, and have no love of physi- 
cal speculation. They are daring in thought and 
theory, but cautious in physical and personal mat- 
ters. An office stool followed by a pension contents 
all too many men in Germany. 

" Reden, Handeln, Tun und Wandeln 
Zeigt der Menschen Wesen nicht. 
Was im Herzen sie im Stillen 
Fest verschliessen, stumm verhullen, 
1st ihr richtigs Angesicht." 

342 



THE GERMAN ARMY 

An overwhelming majority of Germans believe that 
this is man's real portrait; an overwhelming ma- 
jority of Americans would not even understand it. 

The German army is the antidote to this lack of 
physical discipline, this lack of strenuous physical 
life. The army takes the place of our West, of our 
games, of our sports; just as it takes the place of 
England's colonies and public schools and games 
and sports. When looked at in this way, when its 
double duty is recognized, the enormous cost of it 
is not so material. The expense of the German 
army is not greater than our armies, plus what we 
spend for games and sport and colonial adventure. 

Germany has 4,570 miles of frontier to guard, to 
begin with, and her total area is 208,780 square 
miles, or an area one fourth less than that of our 
State of Texas, with a population per square mile 
of 310.4. Of this population 1,000,000, roughly, 
are subjects of foreign powers. Five hundred thou- 
sand are from Austria-Hungary, 100,000 each from 
Finland and Russia, nearly 100,000 from Italy, 
some 17,000 Americans, and so on. In 1900 the 
population speaking German numbered 51,000,000. 

This compact little country is the very heart of 
Europe, surrounded by Russia, Austria-Hungary, 
Italy, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Holland, Den- 
mark, and, across the North Sea, England. In the 
case of trouble in Europe, Germany is the centre. 
Nothing can happen that does not concern her, 
that must not indeed concern her vitally. She has 
fought at one time or another in the last hundred 
years with Russia, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Switzer- 

343 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

land, France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, and 
England, and the various German states among 
themselves ; or her soldiers have fought against their 
soldiers, whether or not the various countries named 
were geographically and politically then what they 
are now. 

Russia's population in 1910 was 160,748,000, and 
including the Finnish provinces, 163,778,800. Since 
1897 ^e population of Russia has increased at the 
annual rate of 2,732,000. The boundaries between 
Russia and Germany are mere sand dunes, and by 
rail the Russian outposts are only a few hours from 
Berlin. France is only across the Rhine, and it is 
no secret that some months ago Great Britain had 
worked out a plan by which she could put 150,000 
troops on the frontiers of Germany, at the service 
of France, in thirteen days. Germany's ocean com- 
merce must pass through the Straits of Dover, 
down the English Channel, within striking distance 
of Plymouth, Portsmouth, Dover, Brest, and Cher- 
bourg. France, which has been looked upon as a 
somewhat negligible quantity, has taken on a new 
lease of life. When Napoleon died, in 182 1, he left 
France swept clean of her fighting men, whose bones 
were bleaching all the way from Madrid to Mos- 
cow. France has recuperated and is almost another 
nation to-day from the stand-point of virility. She 
far surpasses Germany in literature, art, and science, 
and is taking her old place in the world. She led 
the way in motor construction, in field-artillery, in 
aviation, and now she is producing a champion 
middle-weight sparrer, and, marvel of marvels has 

344 



THE GERMAN ARMY 

actually beaten Scotland at foot-ball! She has al- 
ways had brains, and now her stability and virility 
are reviving. This has not passed unnoticed in 
Germany. No wonder Germany looks upon her 
navy as something more than a Winstonchurchill- 
ian luxury! 

One may understand at once from this situa- 
tion, and from her past history, that Germany has 
the sound good sense not to be influenced by the 
latest school of sentimentalists, who pretend to be- 
lieve that the world is a polyglot Sunday-school, 
with converted millionaires as teachers therein; or, 
if not that, a counting-house, where all questions 
of honor, race, religion, love, pride, all the questions 
which bubble their answers in our blood, are to be 
settled by weighing their comparative cost in dol- 
lars. We do not realize how new is this word senti- 
mental. John Wesley, writing of this word " senti- 
mental " as used in Sterne's " Sentimental Journey/' 
says: " Sentimental, what is that? It is not En- 
glish, it is not sense, it conveys no determinate idea. 
Yet one fool makes many, and this nonsensical word 
(who would believe it) is become a fashionable 
one." 

Germany has been taught by bitter experiences, 
and harsh masters, that the ultimate power to com- 
mand must rest with that authority which, if nec- 
essary, can compel people to obey. They recognize, 
too, the mawkish mental foolery of any plan of liv- 
ing together which ignores the part which physical 
force must necessarily play in any political or social 
life which is complete. They agree, too, as does 

345 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

every intelligent man in Christendom, that the ap- 
peal to reason is far preferable to an appeal to war. 
But, pray, what is to be done where there is na 
reason to appeal to? Are reasonable men to strip 
themselves of all armor, and suffer unreason to pre- 
vail? 

An army or a fleet is no more an incitement to 
war among reasonable men, than a policeman is 
an incentive to burglary or homicide. An army 
is not a contemptuous protest against Christianity; 
it is a sad commentary on Christianity's failure and 
inefficiency. An army and a fleet are merely a rea- 
sonable precaution which every nation must take, 
while awaiting the conversion of mankind from the 
predatory to the polite. 

As yet the Germans have not been overtaken by 
the tepid wave of feminism, which for the moment 
is bathing the prosperity-softened culture of Amer- 
ica and England. It is a harsh remedy, but both 
America and England would gain something of 
virility if they were shot over. We are all apt 
enough to become womanish, agitated, or acidulous, 
according to age and condition, when we are reap- 
ing in security the fields cleared, enriched, and 
planted by a hardy ancestry of pioneers. There 
were no self-conscious peace-makers; no worship- 
pers of those two epicene idols: a God too much 
man, and a man too much God; no devotees of 
third-sexism, in the days of Waterloo and Gettys- 
burg, when we had men's tasks to occupy us. 

We are playing with our dolls just now, driving 
our coaches over the roads, sailing our yachts in 

346 



THE GERMAN ARMY 

the waters, eating the fruits of the fields that have 
been won for us by the sweat and blood of those 
gone before. Germany has no leisure for that, no 
doll's house as yet to play in, and she is perhaps 
more fortunate than she knows. 

One can understand, too, that Germany has lit- 
tle patience with the confused thinking which main- 
tains that military training only makes soldiers and 
only incites to martial ambitions; when, on the 
contrary, she sees every day that it makes youths 
better and stronger citizens, and produces that self- 
respect, self-control, and cosmopolitan sympathy 
which more than aught else lessen the chances of 
conflict. 

I can vouch for it that there are fewer personal 
jealousies, bickerings, quarrels in the mess-room 
or below decks of a war-ship, or in a soldiers' camp 
or barracks, than in many church and Sunday-school 
assemblies, in many club smoking-rooms, in many 
ladies' sewing or reading circles. Nothing does 
away more surely with quarrelsomeness than the 
training of men to get on together comfortably, 
each giving way a little in the narrow lanes of 
life, so that each may pass without moral shoving. 
There are no such successful schools for the teach- 
ing of this fundamental diplomacy as the sister 
services, the army and the navy. 

My latest visit to Germany has converted me com- 
pletely to the wisdom of compulsory service. Nor 
am I merely an academic disciple. I have had a 
course in it myself, and were it possible in Amer- 
ica I should give any boy of mine the benefit of the 

347 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

same training. In Germany, at any rate, no student 
of the situation there would deny that, barring Bis- 
marck, the army has done more for the nation than 
any other one factor that can be named. Soldiers 
and sailors train themselves, and train others, first 
of all to self-control, not to war. It is a pity that 
" compulsory service " has come to mean merely 
training to fight. In Germany, at any rate, it means 
far more than that. Two generations of Germans 
have been taught to take care of themselves physi- 
cally without drawing a sword. 

It is rather a puzzling commentary upon the 
growth of democracy, that in America and in En- 
gland, where most has been conceded to the majority, 
there is least inclination on their part to accept the 
necessary personal burden of keeping themselves 
fit, not necessarily for war, but for peace, by accept- 
ing universal and compulsory training. The only 
fair law would be one demanding that no one should 
be admitted to look on at a game of cricket, foot- 
ball, or base-ball who could not pass a mild exami- 
nation in these games, or give proof of an equiva- 
lent training. That would be honorable democracy 
in the realm of sport. 

There formerly existed in Bavaria a supplemen- 
tary tax on estates left by persons who had not 
served in the active army. It was done away with 
at the formation of the empire. There is a pro- 
posal now to vote such an additional tax for all 
Germany, and a very fair tax it would be. 

I am not discussing here the question of com- 
pulsory service in England. It is not difficult to 

348 



THE GERMAN ARMY 

see that part of England's army must of necessity 
be a professional army, which can be sent here and 
there and everywhere, and that conscription would 
not answer the purpose, for compulsory conscrip- 
tion could hardly demand of its recruits that they 
should serve in India, in Canada, or in Bermuda or 
Egypt, for the length of time necessary to make 
their service of value. Conscription, too, on a scale 
to make an army serviceable against the trained 
troops of the Continent is out of the question. 
Therefore, so far as compulsory service for mili- 
tary duty only is concerned, I see no hope for it in 
England. But in a land of free men such as is, or 
used to be, England, and in America, compulsory 
service ought to be undertaken with pride and with 
pleasure, as a moral, not as a military, duty for the 
salvation of the country from internal foes, and as 
a nucleus around which could rally the nation as a 
whole in case of attack from external foes. Patriot- 
ism among us has come to a pretty pass indeed 
when the nation is divided into two classes: those 
growling against the taxation of their surplus; 
and those with their tongues hanging out in antici- 
pation of, and their hands clutching for, unearned 
doles. And now, the more shame to us, must be 
added a third class who use public office for private 
profit. What if we all turned to and gave some- 
thing without being forced to do so ? Where would 
the " Yellow peril " and the " German menace " be 
then? We should have much less exciting and in- 
citing talk and writing if our nerves and digestions 
were in better order. Nothing calms the nerves, in- 

349 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

creases confidence, and lessens the chance of pro- 
miscuous quarrelling better than hard work. 

Even if what the German army has accomplished 
along these lines were not true, there can be no 
freedom of political speculation or experiment, no 
time to make mistakes and to retrieve the situation, 
when one is surrounded on all sides by overt or po- 
tential enemies. Germany must have a powerful 
army and fleet, must have a strong and autocratic 
government, or she is lost. " Ohne Armee kein 
Deutschland." She can permit no silly, no stupid, 
no excited majority to imperil her safety as a 
nation. If Germany were governed as is France, 
where they have had nine new governments since 
the beginning of the twentieth century, and forty- 
four since the republic replaced the empire forty- 
one years ago — not counting six dismissals of the 
cabinet when the prime minister remained — or fifty 
changes of government in less than that number of 
years, Germany would have lost her place on the map. 
France remains only because, so far as defence is 
concerned, France is France plus the British fleet. 

Political geography is the sufficient reason for 
Germany's army and navy. Let us be fair in these 
judgments and admit at once, that if Japan were 
where Mexico is, and Russia where Canada is, and 
Germany separated from us by a few hours' steam- 
ing, certain peace-mongers would have been hanged 
long ago, and our cooing doves of peace would have 
had molten tar mixed with their feathers. An 
Italian proverb runs, " It is easy to scoff at a bull 
from a window/' and we indulge in not a little of 

35o 



THE GERMAN ARMY 

such babyish effrontery from our safe place in the 
world. Germany, on the other hand, looks out 
upon the world from no such safe window-seat ; she 
is down in the ring, and must be prepared at all 
hazards to take care of herself. That is a reason, 
too, why Germany offers little resistance to the rul- 
ing of an autocratic militarism^ The sailors and 
the stokers would rather obey captain and officers, 
however they may have been chosen for them, than 
to be sunk at sea ; and nowadays Germany is ever on 
the high seas, battling hard to protect and to in- 
crease her commerce abroad, and to protect her huge 
industrial population at home. Germany can take 
no chances for the moment, for only " Wer sich 
regiert, der ist mit Zufall fertig." 

One wishes often that one's lips were not sealed, 
one's pen not stayed by the imperious demands of 
honor, to abstain from all mention of discoveries 
or conversations made under the roof of hospital- 
ity, for nothing could well be more enlightening than 
a description of a chat between the great war-lord 
of Germany and a leading pacifist: the one com- 
pletely equipped with knowledge of the history, 
temper, and temperament of his people; the other 
obsessed by a fantastic exaggeration of the power 
and influence of money, even in the world of cul- 
ture and international politics, and preaching his 
panacea in the land, of all others, where even now 
mere money has the least influence, all honor to that 
land! 

Spinoza, the greatest of modern Jews, and the 
father of modern philosophy, writes : " It is not 

351 ' 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

enough to point out what ought to be; we must 
also point ot what can be, so that every one may 
receive his due without depriving others of what 
is due to them." And in another place : " Things 
should not be the subject of ridicule or complaint, 
but should be understood." Those who know lit- 
tle of the history of the development of Germany, 
and particularly of Prussia, cannot possibly under- 
stand another reason for the political apathy of 
the Germans and their pleased support of their 
army. It is this: they have been trained in every- 
thing except self-government, in everything ex- 
cept politics. Perhaps their governors know them 
better than we do. Their progress has come from 
direction from above, not from assertion from 
below. The art or arts of self-government, through- 
out their development as a nation, have been forcibly 
omitted from their curriculum. Every step in our 
national progress, on the contrary, has been taken 
by the people, shoulder to shoulder, breaking their 
way up and out into light and freedom. There is 
little or no trace of any such movement of the peo- 
ple in Germany, and there is little taste for it, and 
no experience to make such effort successful. We, 
who have profited by the teaching of this political 
experience, do not realize in the least how handi- 
capped are the people who have not had it. 

One hundred years ago half the inhabitants of 
Prussia were practically in the toils of serfdom. 
It was only by an edict of 1807, to take effect in 
18 10, that personal serfdom with its consequences, 
especially the oppressive obligation of menial ser- 

35^ 



THE GERMAN ARMY 

vice, was abolished in the Prussian monarchy. 
Caste extended actually to land. All land had a 
certain status, from which the owners and their re- 
tainers took their political position and rights. The 
edict of 1807 was in reality a land reform bill, and 
gave for the first time free trade in land in Prussia. 
It was von Stein, a Bismarck born too soon, who 
induced Frederick William II, King of Prussia, and 
grandson of the Great Elector, to abolish serfdom, 
to open the civil service to all classes, and to con- 
cede certain municipal rights to the towns. But 
von Stein was dismissed from the service of his 
weak-kneed sovereign on the ground that he was 
an enemy of France, and was obliged to take ref- 
uge in Russia. Like other martyrs, his efforts 
watered the political earth for a fruitful harvest. 
It is well to know where we are in the world's 
culture and striving when we speak of other na- 
tions. What were we doing, what was the rest of 
the world doing, in those days when the Hanoverian 
peasant's son, Scharnhorst, and Clausewitz were 
about to lay the foundations of this German army, 
now the most perfect machine of its kind in the 
world ? These were the days prepared for by Jona- 
than Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, Voltaire, Rous- 
seau; by Pitt and Louis XV, and George III; the 
days of near memories of Wolfe, Montcalm, and 
Clive; days when Hogarth was caricaturing Lon- 
don; days when the petticoats of the Pompadour 
swept both India and Canada into the possession 
of England. These names and the atmosphere they 
produce, show by comparison how rough a fellow; 

353 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

was this Prussia of only a hundred years ago. He 
had not come into the circle of the polite or of the 
political world. He was tumbling about, unlicked, 
untaught, inexperienced, already forgetful of the 
training of the greatest school-master of the pre- 
vious century, Frederick the Great, who had made 
a man of him. 

We were already politicians to a man in those 
days, and the Englishman Pitt was map-maker, by 
special warrant, to all Europe. 

When the Prussians were serfs politically, our 
House of Representatives, in 1796, debated whether 
to insert in their reply to the President's speech the 
remark that " this nation is the freest and most 
enlightened in the world." It is true that this 
was at the time when Europe was producing Les- 
sing, Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Mo- 
zart, Haydn, Herschel, and about ready to introduce 
Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Shelley, Heine, Balzac, 
Beethoven, and Cuvier; when Turner was paint- 
ing, Watt building the steam-engine, Napoleon in 
command of the French armies, and Nelson of the 
British fleet; but this bombastic babble of ours 
harmed nobody then, and only serves to show what 
a number of intellectual serfs must have been mem- 
bers of that particular House of Representatives. 

We have not overcome this habit of slapdash 
comparative criticism, for only the other day a dis- 
tinguished American inventor left Berlin with these 
words as his final message : " We have nothing to 
learn from Germany." But in the nineteenth cen- 
tury, where does the American of sober intelligence, 

354 



THE GERMAN ARMY 

if Lincoln be omitted, find a match for Bismarck 
as a statesman, Heine as a wit and song-writer, 
Wagner, Brahms, and Beethoven as musicians, 
Goethe as a man of letters and poet, the still living 
influence of Lessing and Winckelmann as critics, 
Fichte as a scholarly patriot, Hegel and Kant as 
philosophers, von Humboldt, Liebig, Helmholtz, 
Bunsen, and Haeckel as scientists, Moltke and 
Roon as soldiers, Ranke and Mommsen as his- 
torians, Auerbach, Spielhagen, Sudermann, Frey- 
tag, " Fritz " Renter, and Hauptmann as novelists 
and dramatists, Krupp and Borsig as manufactur- 
ers, and the Rothschilds as bankers ? Lincoln, Lee, 
Sherman, Jackson, and Grant may equal these men 
in their own departments, but aside from them our 
only superiority, and a very questionable superiority 
it is, lies in our trust-and-tariff-incubated million- 
aires. Let us try to see straight, if only that we 
may learn and profit by the superiority of others. 

These explanations that I have given, historical, 
political, external, and internal, offer reasons worth 
pondering both why we do not understand Ger- 
many's huge armament and why Germany looks 
upon it as a necessity. 

However much the expenditure on fleet and army 
may be disguised, the burden is colossal. In the 
year 1878 the net expenditure, ordinary and ex- 
traordinary, for purposes of defence, for army and 
navy and all other military purposes whatsoever in- 
cluding pensions, amounted to 452,000,000 marks; 
in 1888, to 660,000,000 marks; in 1898, to 882,000,- 
000 marks; and in 1908, to 1,481,000,000 marks. 

355 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

The total expenses, net, of the empire in 1908 
were 1,735,000,000 marks, showing that only 254,- 
000,000 marks out of the grand total of 1,735,000,- 
000 were spent for other than military purposes. 
As the army and navy now stand at a peace strength 
of some 700,000 men, and as these men are all in 
the prime of their working power, the loss in wages 
and in productive work may be put very conserva- 
tively at 600,000,000 marks, which brings the cost 
of -the support of the military establishment of 
Germany up to 2,000,000,000 marks and more per 
annum, or $500,000,000. 

Many Americans were dismayed when our total 
national expenditure reached the $1,000,000,000 
point, and the Congress voting this expenditure was 
nicknamed the ** Billion-dollar Congress." What 
would we say of an expenditure of half a billion 
dollars for defence alone! With what admiration, 
too, must we regard 65,000,000 people, living in an 
area one quarter smaller than Texas, on a by-no- 
means rich or fertile soil, who can bear cheerfully 
the burden, each year, of half our total national 
expenditure, merely on the military and naval barri- 
cade which enables them to toil in peace and secu- 
rity. 

Humanity has, indeed, made but a poor zigzag 
progress from the gorilla; Christianity, just now 
engaged in blessing the rival banners of warriors 
setting out for one another's throats, has failed 
ignominiously to bring the wolf in man to baptism, 
when the central state of Christian Europe must 
arm to the teeth one in every eighteen of her adult 

356 



THE GERMAN ARMY 

male inhabitants, and spend half a billion dollars 
a year, to protect herself from assault and plunder. 

If the hairy, skin-clad cave-dwellers, or the man 
who left us the Neanderthal skull, could have a 
look at us now, here in Berlin, in many ways the 
centre of the most enlightened people in the world, 
they would undoubtedly go mad trying to under- 
stand what we mean by the word " progress/' And 
yet we smile indulgently at the poor farmers in 
Afghanistan who till their fields with a rifle slung 
across their shoulders. What is Germany doing but 
that! And an enormously heavy rifle it is, costing 
just seven times as much as all other national ex- 
penditures together; in short, it costs seven marks 
of soldier to protect every one mark of plough. I 
admit frankly the horror and the absurdity of all 
this ; but as an argument for disarmament, " it does 
not lie," as the lawyers phrase it. It is a criticism, 
and an unanswerable one, of our failure as human 
beings to enthrone reason and to tame our passions ; 
but it is a veritable call to arms to protect ourselves, 
not a reason for not doing so. Let the international 
gluttons overeat themselves till they are seriously 
ill; but it would be madness to starve ourselves in 
the meantime, and yet that is the grotesque logic of 
certain of our preachers of disarmament. 

At the moment of writing there are 1,000,000 
men at each other's throats in the Balkans, there is 
a revolution in Mexico, and incipient anarchy in 
Central America; as an emollient to this, Great 
Britain is about to present a bust of the late King 
Edward to the Peace Palace at the Hague! I can 

357 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

imagine myself saying " Pretty pussy, nice pussy," 
to the wild-cats I have shot in Nebraska and Dakota, 
but I should not be here if I had; and however small 
my value to the world I live in, I estimate it as worth 
at least a ton of wild-cats. 

I am bound, however, in fairness to call the atten- 
tion of the unwary dabbler in statistics to a point 
of grave importance in dealing with German 
finances. The German Empire, so far as expendi- 
ture and income are concerned, is merely an office, 
a clearing-house so to speak, for the states which 
together make up the empire. The expenses of the 
empire, for example, in 19 10 were $757,900,00 and 
of the army and navy, including extraordinary ex- 
penditures, $314,919,325; this does not include pen- 
sions, clerical expenses, interest, sinking-fund, and 
loss of productive labor, as did the figures on a pre- 
ceding page. To the ignorant or to the malicious, 
who quote these figures to bolster up a socialist or 
pacifist preachment, this looks as though Germany 
had spent one half of her grand total on the army 
and navy. But this is quite wrong. In addition to 
the expenditures of this imperial clearing-house 
called the German Empire, there was spent by the 
states $1,467,325,000: the so-called clearing-house 
bearing the whole burden of expenses for army and 
navy, the separate states nothing except the per 
capita tax, called the matriculation tax, of some 80 
pfennigs. To make this matter^ still more clear, as 
it is a constant source of error not only to the 
foreigner but to the Germans themselves, the income 
of the empire for 19 10 was $757,900,000, the in- 

358 



THE GERMAN ARMY 

come of all the states $1,463,150,000, or of the 
empire and the states combined $2,221,050,000. In 
the same way the debt of the empire in 19 10 stood at 
$1,224,150,000, and the debt of the states of the 
empire at $3,856,325,000, or a grand total outstand- 
ing indebtedness of all Germany of $5,080,475,000. 

Of late years the imperial expenditure of Great 
Britain, for example, has amounted to some $935,- 
000,000 a year; but various local bodies spend also 
some $900,000,000 a year. Some of this is cross- 
spending, but the grand total amounts to some 
$1,500,000,000 a year. 

Before writing or speaking of Germany it js well 
to know at least what Germany is. To pick up a 
hand-book and to quote therefrom the figures relat- 
ing to the German Empire, as though these covered 
Germany, as is often done, is as accurate and help- 
ful to the inquirer, as though one should take the 
figures of the New York clearing-house as accurate 
descriptions of the total and detailed business of all 
the New York banks and trust companies. A clear- 
ing-house is merely a piece of. machinery for the 
adjustment of differences between a host of debtors 
and creditors. The comparative cost of the Ger- 
man army and navy can only be figured properly 
against the income and expenditure of the total 
wealth of all Germany. And all Germany is some- 
thing more than the German Empire, which in cer- 
tain respects is only a book-keeper, an adjuster of 
differences. 

" Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland ? 
Ist's Preussenland? Ist's Schwabenland? 

359 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Ist's wo am Rhein die Rebe bliiht? 
Ist's wo am Belt die Move zieht? 
O nein ! O nein ! O nein ! 
Sein Vaterland muss grosser sein. 

" Das ganze Deutschland soil es sein ! 
O Gott vom Himmel, sieh' darein, 
Und gib uns rechten deutschen Muth; 
Dass wir es lieben treu und gut ! 
Das soil es sein! das soil es sein! 
Das ganze Deutschland soil es sein ! " 

The official title of the sovereign is not Emperor 
of Germany, or Emperor of the Germans, but Ger- 
man Emperor. Thus the territorial rights of other 
heads of states are safeguarded. Even the popular- 
ity of the first Emperor, who wished to be named 
Emperor of Germany and who disputed with Bis- 
marck for hours over the question, could not bring 
this about, and he was proclaimed at Versailles 
merely German Emperor. 

However heavy the burden of armament may be, 
we must be careful to put such expenditure in its 
proper perspective and in its proper relations, not 
only to the Germany Empire, which for official, 
clerical, and statistical matters is quite a different 
entity, but to " das ganze Deutschland." The Ger- 
man Empire is the clearing-house, the adjutant, the 
executive officer, the official clerk, the representative 
in many social, financial, military, and diplomatic 
capacities of Germany; but it is not, and never for 
a moment should be confused with, what all Ger- 
mans love, and what it has cost them blood and 
tears and great sacrifices to bring into the circle of 
the nations, the German Fatherland ! 

,360 



THE GERMAN ARMY 

In 1 910 the total funded debt of the empire 
amounted to 4,896,600,000 marks, and the debt in 
1912 had risen to 5,396,887,801 marks. In the six 
years ending March, 191 1, Germany's debt increased 
by $415,000,000. 

In 1 9 10 the funded debt of Germany (empire 
and states) was $4,896,600,000; of France $6,905,- 
000,000; of England $3,894,500,000, and of Russia 
$4,880,750,000. It is a curious psychical and social 
phenomenon that, though we are as suspicious as 
criminals of one another's good faith in keeping 
the peace, we are veritable angels of innocence in 
trusting one another financially, for back of these 
huge debts we keep in ready money, that is, gold, to 
pay them : Germany at the present writing $275,- 
000,000 in the Reichsbank; France $640,000,000 in 
the Bank of France; England a paltry $175,000,000 
in the Bank of England; and Russia $925,000,000 
in the Bank of Russia. We all livq upon credit, an 
elastic moral tie which seems to be inimitably 
stretchable, and both a nation's and an individual's 
wealth is measured not by what he has, but by 
what he is, that is to say, by his character or credit. 
It is startling to find how we distrust one another 
along certain lines and how we trust one another 
along others. The total amount of gold in these 
four countries would just about pay the interest at 
four per cent, for two years on their total indebted- 
ness! 

From what we have seen of the proportion of 
expenditure that goes to military purposes, it can- 
not be denied that Germany is increasing her liabili- 

361 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

ties at an extraordinary rate, and largely for pur- 
poses of protection. In the last two years the in- 
terest on her increased debt alone, at four per cent., 
amounts to $5,000,000; while the interest at four 
per cent, upon military expenditures of all kinds 
amounts to the tidy sum of $20,000,000 per annum. 
The German, however, faces these facts and figures, 
not as a matter of choice, not as a matter of in- 
surance wholly, but as a hard necessity. It is what 
the delayed conversion of the world is costing him, 
not to speak of what it costs the rest of us. He is 
surrounded by enemies ; he is not by nature a fight- 
ing man ; his whole industrial and commercial prog- 
ress and his amassed wealth have come from train- 
ing, training, training; and he sees no alternative, 
and I am bound to say that I see none either, but 
a nation trained also to defence, cost what it may. 

The last German estimates (1912) balance with 
a revenue and expenditure of $671,222,605. The 
naval expenditure is put at $114,306,575; the army 
expenditure is put at $192,627,080. Both the army 
and navy are being largely increased. In the year 
19 1 6 the strength of the navy is expected to be 
about 79,000 men, and of the army and navy com- 
bined 767,000. In the last ten years two nations 
have almost doubled their naval personnel: Ger- 
many has increased hers from 31,157 to 60,805, and 
Austria-Hungary from 9,069 to 17,277. In Great 
Britain the increase has been about one seventh, 
and this one seventh is about equal to the present 
strength of Austria. 

The gross naval expenditure, estimated, of the 

362 



THE GERMAN ARMY 

United States for 19 12 amounts to $132,848,030, 
and the number of men 63,468. The gross naval 
expenditure of Great Britain, estimated, for the 
same year is put at $224,410,235, and the number 
of men 134,000. The gross naval expenditure of 
Germany is put at $114,306,575, which includes 
$489,235 for air-ships and experiments therewith 
the number of men 66,783. France proposes f 
spend, plus an addition due to operations in M 
rocco, $90,000,000, number of men 58,404; ai 
Japan $44,309,145, number of men 49,389. T\tc 
new corps have been voted for the German army, 
to be numbered 24 and 25; one is for the Russian 
frontier, with head-quarters at Allenstein, and the 
other for the French frontier, with head-quarters 
at Sarrebourg or Mulhouse. A German army corps 
on a war footing comprises about 52,000 men, with 
150 guns and 16,000 horses. The reader should 
notice, as a reminder of the still latent jealousies of 
the different states of the German Empire, that the 
three army corps raised in Bavaria are not num- 
bered consecutively, twenty-one, twenty-two, and 
twenty-three, but one, two, and three! 

To the American the pay of the German troops, 
officers and men, is ludicrously small. It is evident 
that men do not undertake to fit themselves to be 
officers, and to struggle through frequent and severe 
examinations to remain officers, for the pay they re- 
ceive. A lieutenant receives for the first three years 
$300 a year, from the fourth to the sixth year $425, 
from the seventh to the ninth year $495, from the 
tenth to the twelfth year $550, and after the twelfth 

363 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

year $600 a year. A captain receives from the first 
to the fourth year $850, from the fifth to the eighth 
year $1,150, and the ninth year and after $1,275 
a year. Of one hundred officers who join, only an 
average of eight ever attain to the command of a 
regiment. In Bavaria and Wurtemberg, promotion 
is quicker by from one to three years than in Prussia. 
In Prussia promotion to Oberleutnant averages 10 
years, to captain or Rittmeister 15 years, to major 
25 years, to colonel 33 years, and to general 37 years. 
Jt would not be altogether inhuman if these gentle- 
men occasionally drank a toast to war and pestilence ! 

A commanding general, or general inspector of 
cavalry or field artillery, receives $3,495 ; a division 
commander, or inspector of cavalry, field and heavy 
artillery, $3,388 ; a brigade commander, $2,565 ; com- 
mander of a regiment, or officer of the general staff 
of the same rank, $2,193. There are various addi- 
tions to these sums for travelling, keep of horses, 
house-rent, and the like. All soldiers and officers 
travel at reduced rates on the railways and are 
allowed a certain amount of luggage free. It is a 
commentary upon the three nations, that in Ger- 
many the soldier receives a reduced rate when 
travelling, in England the golfer pays a reduced 
rate, and in America, until lately, the politicians 
were given free passes. One could almost produce 
the three countries from that limited knowledge. 

At the cadet school at Gross Lichterfelde there 
are a thousand pupils. They are taught riding, 
swimming, dancing, French, English, mathematics, 
and of course receive technical military instruction. 

364 



THE GERMAN ARMY 

The fee is $200, but for the sons of officers, and 
according to their means, the fees are reduced to 
$112, $75, and even as low as $22, and in some 
deserving cases no fee at all is charged. 

There is no professional army in Germany, as 
in England and in America. Every German who is 
physically fit must serve practically from the age of 
seventeen to forty-five. Those in the infantry serve 
two years; those in the cavalry and horse artillery 
and mounted rifles, three years. About forty-eight 
per cent, who are examined are rejected as unfit, not 
necessarily because they are incapable of service, but 
bcause the expense of training all is too great. These 
men receive 40 pfennigs a day, 2J pfennigs being 
deducted for their food. 

There are some 40,000 men who join the army 
voluntarily for a term of two or three years, and 
who re-enlist and become non-commissioned officers, 
and if they remain twelve years they are entitled 
to $200 on leaving the service, and head the lists 
of candidates for the railway, postal, police, street- 
cleaning, and other civil services. Some 10,000 men 
who have passed a certain examination serve only 
one year and are entitled to certain privileges. 

Each man in the infantry serves 2 years in the 
active army, 5 years in the active reserve, 5 years 
in the first division of the Landwehr, 6 years in 
the second division of the Landwehr, and 6 years 
in the Landsturm. Colonel Gadke calculates that 
Germany has now under arms not less than 714,000 
soldiers and sailors, and that 4,800,000 can be put 
into the field if wanted out of the 6,000,000 

365 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

who have done service with the colors. Out of this 
enormous total, practically none, according to the 
last census, is illiterate. Our American census of 
19x0 gives the number of men of militia age in New 
England as 1,458,900, and in the whole country 
20,473,684. 

Promotion from the ranks, as we understand it, 
is practically unknown. The German officers pass 
through the ranks, it is true, as part of their educa- 
tion at the beginning of their military career, but 
those who do so join in the beginning as candidates 
for commissions, and have been provisionally ac- 
cepted by the commander and officers of the reg- 
iment they propose to join, as must every candidate 
for a commission in the German army. If the 
candidate is not wanted, it is hinted to him that this 
is the case, and he must go elsewhere, as this decision 
is final. Every German regiment's officers' mess is 
thus in some sort a club. 

Officers are supplied from the cadet corps, and 
from those who join the ranks as candidates for 
commissions. All cadets must pass through a war- 
school before obtaining a commission. Of these 
there are 10 in Prussia, Wurtemberg, and Saxony, 
and 1 at Munich in Bavaria. They there receive their 
commissions as second lieutenants. There are 9 
Prussian schools, the Hauptkadettenanstalt at Gross 
Lichterf elde, and 8 Kadetten-Hauser ; and 1 at 
Dresden and 1 at Munich. Some of these I have 
visited, and been made at home with the greatest 
courtesy and hospitality. These German cadet 
schools are to a great extent charitable institutions 

366 



THE GERMAN ARMY 

for the sons of officers and civilian officials. The 
charges range, as I have indicated above, from $200 
a year to nothing at all. 

There are in addition schools of musketry, a 
school for instruction in machine-gun practice, in- 
struction in infantry battalion practice, a school of 
military gymnastics, of military equitation, officers' 
riding-schools, a military technical academy at 
Charlottenburg, where officers may study the tech- 
nical engineering, and communication services, an 
artillery and engineer school at Munich, a field- 
artillery school of gunnery, a foot-artillery school 
of gunnery, a cavalry telegraph school, and the 
staff colleges. 

Of technical military matters I know nothing. 
I have some experience in handling horses in har- 
ness and under saddle, and on subjects with which 
I am familiar I venture to pass judgments in the 
class-room. I have visited many of these class- 
rooms, and listened to the teaching and lectures 
in French, English, strategy, and political geogra- 
phy, and kindred topics, and if the rest of the in- 
struction is on a par with what I heard there is 
no criticism to be made. I may not say where, but 
one of the instructors in French was a real pleasure 
to listen to. 

The courses and examinations which lead up, in 
the Kriegesakademie, or staff college, to the grade 
of fitness for the general staff, or the technical di- 
vision of the general staff, or administrative staff 
work, or employment as instructors, are of the very 
stiffest. An officer who succeeds in reaching such 

367 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

proficiency, that he is sent up to the general staff 
must be a very blue ribbon of a scholar in his own 
field. 

The quarters, the food, the training, are Spar- 
tan indeed at the cadet schools, but how valuable 
that is, is shown in the faces, manners, physique, 
and general bearing of the picked youths one sees 
at the Kriegesakademie in Berlin. No one after 
seeing these fellows would deny for a moment the 
value of a sound, hard discipline. The same may 
be seen at our own West Point, where the trans- 
formation of many a country bumpkin, into an 
officer and a gentleman, in four years is almost unbe- 
lievable. 

The truth is that most of us suffer from lack of 
discipline, and the intelligent men of every nation 
will one day insist that, if the state is to meddle in 
insurance and other matters, it must logically, and 
for its own salvation, demand compulsory service; 
not necessarily for war, but for social and eco- 
nomic peace within its own boundaries. It is a politi- 
cal absurdity that you may tax individuals to pro- 
vide against accident and sickness to themselves, 
but that you may not tax individuals by compulsory 
service to provide against accident and sickness to 
the state. There can be nothing but ultimate con- 
fusion where the state pays a man if he is ill, pays 
him if he is hurt, pays him when he is old, and yet 
does not force him to keep well, and thus avoid ac- 
cident and a pauper's old age by obliging him to sub- 
mit to two or three years' sound physical training. 
Whether the training is done with a gun or with- 

368 



THE GERMAN ARMY 

out it matters little. Most men of our breed like 
to know how to kill things, so that a gun would 
probably be an inducement. 

The more one knows of the severe demands 
upon the officers of the German army and of their 
small pay, the more one realizes that if they are 
not angels there must be some further explanation 
of their willingness to undertake the profession. 
First of all, the Emperor is a soldier and wears at 
all times the soldier's uniform. Further, he gives 
from his private purse a small allowance monthly 
to the poorer officers of the guard regiments. A 
German officer receives consideration on all sides, 
whether it be in a shop, a railway-carriage, a draw- 
ing-room, or at court. 

To a certain extent his uniform is a dowry; he 
expects and often gets a good marriage portion in 
return for his shoulder-straps and brass buttons; 
and in every case it gives him a recognized social 
position, in a country where the social lines are 
drawn far more strictly than in any other country 
outside of Austria and India. This constant wear- 
ing of the sword is no new thing. Tacitus, who 
would have been an uncompromising advocate of 
compulsory service had he lived in our time, writes : 
" A German transacts no business, public or pri- 
vate, without being completely armed. The right 
of carrying arms is assumed by no person what- 
ever till the state has declared him duly qualified." 
It is the recognized occupation of the nobility, and, 
in very many families, a tradition. In the army 
of Saxony, on January i, 191 1, out of every hun- 

369 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

i 

dred officers of the war ministry, of the general 
commands, and of the higher staff, 44.33 P er cent, 
were noblemen; of the officers of the infantry, 26.19 
were noblemen; of the cavalry, 60.92 were noble- 
men ; and of the officers of the entire army, all arms, 
24.98 were noblemen. 

It is worth chronicling in this connection, for the 
benefit of those who wish a real insight into Ger- 
man social life, that few people discriminate be- 
tween the old nobility, or men who take their titles 
from the possession of land and their descendants, 
and the new and morbidly disliked nobility, who 
have bought or gained their patents of nobility, as 
is done often enough in England, by profuse con- 
tributions to charity or to semi-political and cul- 
tural undertakings favored by the court, or by di- 
rect contributions to party funds, by valuable ser- 
vices rendered, or by mere length of service. This 
new nobility, anxious about their status, satisfied 
to have arrived, jealous of rivals, are the dead 
weight which ties Germany fast to bureaucratic 
government and to a policy of no change. They 
represent, even in educated Germany, a complacent 
mediocrity ; indignant at rebuke, indifferent to prog- 
ress, heedless of experience, impatient of criticism, 
haters of haste, and jealous of superiority. Even 
Bismarck, the creator of this bureaucracy, lamented 
the insolence and bad manners of the state ser- 
vants. 

The essential and ever-present quality of the real 
aristocrat and of a real aristocracy is, of course, 
courage. It may dislike change, but it is not afraid 

370 



THE GERMAN ARMY 

of it. The real gentleman, of course, does not 
care whether he is a gentleman or not. The char- 
acteristic of an artificial, tailor-made aristocracy 
is timidity and a shrinking from change. This new 
nobility, created because it is carefully charitable, 
or serviceable, or lohg in office, is not only in pos- 
session of the civil service, but occupies high posts 
in the army and navy. While not minimizing its 
value, it is everwhere maintained in Germany that 
it acts as a bulwark against progress. They are a 
nobility of office-holders, and they partake of the 
qualities and characteristics of the office-holder 
everywhere. They sometimes forget the country in 
the office ; while the older nobility, which made Ger- 
many, despises the office except as an instrument 
or weapon to be used for the welfare of the coun- 
try. The political pessimism in Germany to-day 
is caused by, and comes from, this army of the new 
nobility. 

Americans and English both write of Germany, 
and speak of it, as being in the grip of a small group 
of aristocrats. Not at all; it is in the shaky and 
self-conscious control of men whose patents of 
nobility were given them with their office, a titled 
bureaucracy, in short. Let us prove this state- 
ment by running through the list of the chief of- 
ficers of the state. Of the officials of the German 
Empire: the chancellor's grandfather, Bethmann- 
Hollweg, was a professor, and afterward minister 
of education; the secretary of state's father was 
plain Herr Kiderlin-Wachter ; the under-secretary 
of state is Herr Zimmermann; the secretary of the 

371 



/ 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

interior is Herr Delbriick; of finance, Herr Wer- 
muth; of justice, Herr Lisco; of the navy, von 
Tirpitz, who was recently ennobled; the postmas- 
ter is Herr Kraetke. Not one of these officials of 
the empire is of the old nobility! 

Of the ii ministers of the kingdom of Prussia, 
the minister for agriculture, von Schorlemer; for 
war, von Heeringen; for education, von Trott zu 
Solz; and for the interior, von Dallwitz, are of the 
old nobility; but the other 7 ministers are not. Of 
the 12 Oberprasidenten, men who rule the prov- 
inces, 6 are noblemen; of the 37 Regierungsprasi- 
denten, 14 are of the nobility, 23 are not. This 
should dispose finally of the frequently heard as- 
sertion that Germany and Prussia are ruled by a 
small group of the landed nobility and that there is 
no way open to the talents. It is fair to say that a 
very small and intimate court group do have a cer- 
tain influence in naming the candidates for these 
posts, but they are too wily to keep these positions 
for themselves. 

I suppose we all like, in a childish way, to wear 
placards of our prowess in the form of orders and 
decorations, but the evening attire of this bureau- 
cratic nobility often looks as though there had been 
a ceramic eruption, a sort of measles of decora- 
tions. Men's breasts are covered with medals, stars, 
porcelain plaques, and their necks are hung with 
ribbons with a dangling medallion, all distributed 
from the patriarchal imperial Christmas-tree for 
every conceivable service from cleaning the streets 
to preaching properly on the imperial yacht. Men 

372 



THE GERMAN ARMY 

collect them as they would stamps or butterflies, 
and some of them must be very expert. 

The officers and the officials who are recognized 
as giving their services as a family tradition, as a 
patriotic service, or out of sheer love of the pro- 
fession of arms, are rather liked than disliked, and 
give a tone and set a standard for all the rest. Both 
these officers and their men are respected. Of no 
German soldier could it be written : 

" I went into a theatre as sober as could be, 
They gave a drunk civilian room, but 'adn't none for me; 
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-'alls, 
But when it comes to fightin', Lord! they'll shove me in the 
stalls." 

On the contrary, every effort is made to keep the 
army pleased with itself and proud of itself. The 
chancellor of the empire is always given military 
rank; officers are not allowed to marry unless they 
have, or acquire by marriage, a suitable income; 
the dignity of the officer is upheld and his pride 
catered to; officers are made to feel that they are 
the darlings of the Fatherland by everybody from 
the Emperor down. 

This artificial stimulant goes far to keep them 
contented, and the fact that the scale of comfort- 
able living in Germany was twenty years ago far 
below, and is even now not equal to, that of the 
equivalent classes with us makes the task easier. 
They have not been taught to want the things we 
want, and are still satisfied with less. And back 
of and behind it all is the feeling among the leaders, 
that the army furnishes no small amount of the 
patriotic cement necessary to hold Germany to- 

373 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

gether. Ulysses lashed himself to the mast as he 
passed the sirens of luxury and leisure, and for the 
German Ulysses the army supplies the cords. It 
is not the foreign student of German life alone who 
notices that the Germans, even now, seem to be 
tribal rather than national. The best friends of 
Germany in Germany also recognize this weakness, 
,comment upon it, and favor every possible ex- 
pedient to overcome it. 

I admit frankly my admiration for this Spartan 
three quarters of a million of soldiers and sailors, 
and their officers. It offers a splendid example of 
patriotism, of disregard for the weakening com- 
forts, luxuries, and fussy pleasures that absorb 
too much of our vitality; and of disdain for the 
material successes, which in their selfish rivalry, 
breed the very industrial distresses which are now 
our problems. At least here is a large professional 
body whose aims, whose way of living, and whose 
earnings prove that there can be a social hierarchy 
not dependent upon money. It is one of the finest 
lessons Germany has to teach, and long may she 
teach it. 

That is distinctly the side of the army that I 
know and approve without reserve. Of its value 
as a fighting force it would be ridiculous, in my 
case, to write. I have read and heard scores of 
criticisms and comments from many sources, and 
they range from those who claim that the German 
army is unbeatable, even if attacked from all sides, 
to those who maintain that it is already stale and 
mechanical. 

374 



THE GERMAN ARMY 

The war of 1866, when Prussia represented Ger- 
many, lasted thirty-five days ; the war against Den- 
mark lasted six months and twelve days; the war 
against France lasted six months and nine days. 
Thirty-six German cavalry regiments did not lose 
a man during the whole campaign of 1870-1871 ; 
and the Sixth Army Corps was hardly under fire. 
There has been no long, practical, and therefore 
decisive test of the army. Of the transport and 
commissary services during the French war, when 
Germany toward the end of it had 630,000 men 
in the field, certainly we, with the deplorable mis- 
management and scandal of our Spanish war, and 
the British with the investigations after the Egyp- 
tian campaign fresh in memory, have nothing to 
say, except that it was wholly admirable and be- 
yond the breath of suspicion of greed, thievery, or 
political chicanery. There was no rotten leather, 
and no poisoned beef. 

r Officers, too, in the French war, were called 
upon to do their duty and to obey, and no indi- 
vidual brilliancy which interfered with the gen- 
eral plan was condoned or pardoned, no matter 
how highly placed the relatives or how influential 
the connections of the offender. A distinguished 
general, after a successful and heroic victory, who 
had been tempted into a bloody battle against orders, 
was called before his superiors, told that the first 
lesson the soldier had to learn was obedience, and 
sent home! A brother of the chief of staff went 
into the war a captain and came back a captain ! 

I am wondering what our underpaid, unnoticed 
375 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

regulars in the army and navy would have to say, 
were they free to speak, of the conduct of our last 
martial escapade with Spain, by our press and by 
our politicians. There would be no stories of the 
German kind, I am sure, and no single record of 
an influential civilian who did not get all the glory 
that he deserved. My impulsive countrymen are 
always manufacturing heroes and saviors, but 
fortunately the crosses upon which they crucify 
them are erected almost as fast as the crowns are 
nicely fitted and comfortable, so that there is little 
danger of permanent tyranny. What Richelieu 
said of the French applies to some extent to our- 
selves : " Le propre du caractere f ran^ais c'est 
que, ne se tenant pas fermement au bien, il ne 
s'attache non plus longtemps au mal." 

During and after the Franco-German war there 
was no cheap heroism, no feminine! excitability 
producing litters of heroes; no slobbering, oscula- 
tory advertising; no press undertaking the duties 
of a general staff, which in our Spanish war al- 
most completely clouded the real heroism and pa- 
triotism that were in evidence. There were no 
newspaper-made heroes, hastening back to exchange 
cheap military glory for votes and delicious no- 
toriety. For all of which, gentlemen, let us thank 
God, and give praise where it is due. 

The army, too, is an interesting commentary 
upon the changes that are so rapidly taking place 
in Germany, from an agricultural to a manufactur- 
ing nation. Of every ioo recruits that presented 
themselves there were passed as fit, in 1902, for the 

376 



THE GERMAN ARMY 

First Army Corps, of those from the country 72.76; 
of those from the towns 63.88; inicjio these figures 
had fallen to 67.24 and 53.66. In the Second Army 
Corps the recruits passed as fit, from the towns, 
had fallen from 60.74 in 1902 to 50.42 in 19 10. 
In the Fifth Army Corps, of recruits from the 
towns the percentage of those passed fell from 60.07 
to 46.13. In the Sixth Army Corps the percentage 
fell from 50.14 to 43.83. In the Sixteenth Army 
Corps from 67.50 to 58.80. In the Eighteenth 
Army Corps the recruits from the towns passed as 
fit had fallen from 60.46 in 1902 to 46.58 in 1910. 
The average for the whole empire, of those from 
the towns passed as fit, had fallen from 53.52 in 
1902 to 47.87 in 1910. The First Army Corps has 
its head-quarters at Konigsberg, and recruits from 
that neighborhood; the Second Army Corps has 
its head-quarters at Stettin, and recruits from 
Pomerania; the Fifth Army Corps has its head- 
quarters at Posen, and recruits from Posen and 
Lower Silesia; the Sixth Army Corps has its head- 
quarters at Breslau, and recruits from Silesia; the 
Sixteenth Army Corps has its head-quarters at 
Metz, and recruits from Lorraine; the Eighteenth 
Army Corps has its head-quarters at Frank furt- 
am-Main, and recruits from that neighborhood. 
These figures are enough to make my point, with- 
out giving the statistics for all the twenty-three 
corps, which is, that in spite of the precautions taken, 
the German recruit, especially from the towns, in 
whatever part of the country, is losing vigor and 
stamina. 

377 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Even this hard-and-fast arrangement of a bu- 
reaucratic government with a military back-bone 
does not solve all the problems. When one sees, 
however, the German school-boy, and the German 
recruit during the first weeks of his training, in the 
barracks and out, and I have watched thousands 
of them, and then looks over this same material 
after two or three years of training, it is hard to 
believe that they are the same, and that even these 
hard-working officers have been able to bring about 
such a change. 

Of the charges of brutality and severity I only 
know what the statistics tell me, that in an army 
of over 600,000 men there were some 500 cases 
brought to the notice of the superior officers last 
year. In 191 1 there were 12,919 convictions for 
crimes and misdemeanors and 578 desertions. Of 
the 32,711 common soldiers in the Saxon army in 
191 1, 30 committed suicide; in 1909, 29; in 1905, 
24; in 1901, 36; that is to say, roughly, one man 
per thousand. Of the why and wherefore I can- 
not say, but Saxony is a peculiarly overpopulated 
section of Germany, and the population is over- 
driven; and the German everywhere is a dreamy 
creature compared with us, of less toughness of 
fibre either morally or physically, and no doubt, 
here and there, under-exercising and over-thinking 
make the world seem to be a mad place and impos- 
sible to live in. Indeed, it is no place to live in for 
the best of us if we take it, or ourselves, too seri- 
ously. The German army is an educated army, as 
is no other army in the world, and there are the 

378 



THE GERMAN ARMY 

diseases peculiar to education to combat. A medi- 
ocre ability to think, and a limited intellectual ex- 
perience, coupled with a craving for miscellaneous 
reading, breed new microbes almost as fast as 
science discovers remedies for the old ones. 

Bismarck's words, " Ohne Armee kein Deutsch- 
land," meant to him, and mean to-day, far more 
than that the army is necessary for defence. It 
is the best all-round democratic university in the 
world; it is a necessary antidote for the physical 
lethargy of the German race; it is essential to dis- 
cipline; it is a cement for holding Germany to- 
gether; it gives a much- worried and many-times- 
beaten people confidence; the poverty of the great 
bulk of its officers keeps the level of social expen- 
diture on a sensible scale; it offers a brilliant ex- 
ample, in a material age, of men scorning ease for 
the service of their country; it keeps the peace in 
Europe; and until there is a second coming, of a 
Christ of pity, and patience, and peace, it is as good 
a substitute for that far-off divine event as puzzled 
man has to offer. 

It is silly and superficial to look upon the German 
army only as a menace, only as a clod of provo- 
cations in glittering uniforms, only as a helmeted 
frown with a turned-up moustache. It is not, and 
I make no such claim for it, an army or an officers' 
corps of Puritans or of self-sacrificing saints, but 
it does partake of the dreamy, idealistic German 
nature, as does every other institution in Germany. 
Though, as a whole, it is a fighting machine, the 
various parts of it are not imbued with that spirit 

379 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

alone. The uneasy pessimism of the dreamer, 
which distrusts the comfortable solutions of the 
business-like politicians, and leaders, in their own 
and in other countries, is as noticeable in the army 
as in all other departments of German life. 

"And all through life I see a cross, 
Where sons of God yield up their breath; 
There is no gain except by loss, 
There is no life except by death, 
There is no vision but by faith ; 
Nor glory but by bearing shame, 
Nor justice but by taking blame." 

There have been many, and there are still, sol- 
diers who hold that cr eed. There are not a few of 
them in Germany. 



380 



IX 
GERMAN PROBLEMS 

A GREAT nation like Germany must have 
characteristics, anxieties, problems, and re- 
sponsibilities, some of which are pecu- 
liar to itself. The individual must be of small im- 
portance who has not problems and burdens of his 
own arising from his environment, position, work, 
and his personal relations with other men ; as well as 
problems of temper, temperament, health, educa- 
tion, and traditions peculiar to himself. 

Wise men recognize two things about every other 
man : that he has his own problems, and that no one 
else thoroughly understands either another man's 
handicaps or his advantages ; and that the only way 
to judge him is not to go behind the returns, but to 
note how he lives with these same problems. They 
are there, there is no doubt about that; the ques- 
tion is, does he smile or scowl? does he work away 
toward a solution, or allow himself to be swamped 
by them? do they dominate him, or he them? has 
he that sun of life, vitality, sufficient to burn away 
the fog, or does he live and die in a moist, semi- 
impenetrable fog, in which he flounders timidly and 
rather aimlessly about, always rather discouraged, 
rather in the dark, and lamentably damp in person 

381 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

and in spirits? The only fair test of a man's life 
is his living of it, and the same is true of a nation. 

Of Germany's history, traditions, and tempera- 
ment I have written. No one can fail to note the 
chief characteristics : their gregariousness, their 
melancholic and subjective way of looking at life, 
their passion for music. It is more what they think, 
than what they do or see, that gives them pleasure. 
They agree with Erasmus, that " it is a foolish 
error to believe that happiness is dependent upon 
things; it is dependent entirely upon one's opinion 
of them." The indefinite has no terrors for them, 
they delight indeed in the indefinable. They have 
done little in great sculpture and architecture, or 
the founding and ruling of colonies, as compared 
with their supreme achievements in music, in phi- 
losophy, in lyric poetry. 

The art of music, which moves one greatly to- 
ward nothing in particular; which supplies sounds 
but not a language for the mysteries of feeling; 
which easily carries a sensitive soul away from its 
sorrows or drowns it in tears, and all without of- 
fering a semblance of a practical solution; which 
orchestrates a greater fury, a more poignant jeal- 
ousy, a sweeter note of bird, a harsher clang of 
weapons, than any human energy can even imagine 
to exist ; this art with which marching soldiers sing 
away their fatigue, but not really; with which dis- 
consolate lovers wing their hopes, but not really; 
with which the pious pipe themselves to heaven, but 
not really ; with which, by strings and beaten skins, 
organ-pipes and blowing brass, an anaesthesia of 

382 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 

ecstasy is produced, leaving one only the weaker 
against the dourness and doggedness of the devil; 
with which men and women hymn themselves home 
to God, only to lose Him when they leave the 
threshold of His house; which choruses from a 
thousand throats patriotism, defiance, self-confi- 
dence, but arms none of them with any useful 
weapon ; which with drums and brass can send any 
lout to heroism without his knowing why; this art 
which burns up the manhood of its devotees — who 
ever heard of a great tenor who was a great man, 
or even of a great musician for more than half of 
whose life one must needs not apologize? — this art 
flourishes in Germany not without reason, and not 
for nothing. 

In a ragged school in the neighborhood of Posen 
where the children could hardly speak German they 
could sing; in a public school in Charlottenburg fifty 
boys, aged between eight and fifteen, sang the part- 
song known to every college man in America, " On 
a Bank Two Roses Grew/' as well as a college glee 
club; those who know Bayreuth, or have attended 
a musical festival, or listened to one of the great 
clubs of male voices, or heard the orchestras and 
military bands, will not deny the delights of music 
in Germany. In Berlin there is not a hall suitable 
for a musical recital that is not engaged a year, 
sometimes more, in advance. 

In the beautiful Golden Hall of the castle of the 
Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, at Schwe- 
rin, I have attended a concert given by the Grand 
Duke's own orchestra, where the selections were 

383 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

all compositions of former leaders or members of 
the orchestra, dating back over a period of two hun- 
dred years. For centuries in this particular grand 
duchy music and the theatre, supported and guided 
by the sovereign, have offered a school of entertain- 
ment and instruction to the people. At this present 
writing, special trains are run to Schwerin from 
the surrounding country districts, and the people for 
miles around subscribe for their seats for the whole 
winter, and attend the theatre and certain concerts 
as regularly as children go to school. It sounds 
oddly to the ears of an American to hear criticism 
to the effect, that there are more high-class music 
and more classical plays than the people have either 
time or money for. Here is a population which is 
actually overindulging in culture. We complain 
of too little; here they complain of too much. It 
makes one wonder whether any of the problems of 
social life are satisfactorily soluble; whether in- 
deed it be not true that even the virtues carried to 
an extreme do not become vices. Philanthropy in 
more than one city in America is spending time, 
money, and energy to bring about this very en- 
thusiasm for music and the more intellectual arts 
which, it is maintained, here in Schwerin at least, 
has gone too far. 

These problems are not so easy of solution as 
the ignorant and the inexperienced think. Imagine 
the inhabitants of Hoboken, New Jersey; of Lynn, 
Massachusetts; of Kalamazoo, Michigan; of Bloody 
Gulch, Idaho, spending too much time and money 
listening to the music of Palestrina and Bach, or to 

384 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 

the plays of Shakespeare ; and yet what money and 
energy would not be spent by certain enthusiasts 
for the arts did they think such a result possible! 
And, after all, it might prove not a blessing, but a 
danger. 

Whenever or wherever you are in the company 
of Germans you notice their pleasure and their keen 
interest in the subjective, rather than in the ob- 
jective side of life. It is from within out that they 
are stirred, not as we are, by outside things work- 
ing upon us. They are still the dreaming, drink- 
ing, singing, impulsive Germans of Tacitus. Titus 
Livius, Plutarch, and Machiavelli, all maintained 
that the successive invasions of the Germans into 
Italy were for the sake of the wine to be found 
there. Plutarch writes that " the Gauls were in- 
troduced to the Italian wine by a Tuscan named 
Arron, and so excited were they by the desire for 
more that, taking their wives and chidren w^ith them, 
they journeyed across the Alps to conquer the land 
of such good vintages, looking upon other countries 
as sterile and savage by comparison." Even if this 
be not history, it is an impression ; and at any rate, 
from that day to this the Germans have agreed 
with the dictum of Aulus Gellius : " Prandium au- 
tem abstemium, in quo nihil vini potatur, canium 
dicitur: quoniam canis vino caret." When the Ro- 
man historian first came into contact with them he 
notes, that their bread was lighter than other bread, 
because " they use the foam from their beer as 
yeast." 

Tacitus writes of them: " The Germans abound 

385 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

with rude strains of verse, the reciters of which, 
in the language of the country, are called ' Bards.' " 

I visited a private stable in Bavaria, as well or- 
dered and as well kept as any private stable in 
America or in England, and the head coachman 
was a reader of poetry; and though he had received 
numerous offers of higher wages in the city, de- 
clined them, giving as one reason that the view 
from the window of his room could not be equalled 
elsewhere ! Where can one find a stable-man in our 
country who reads Shelley or Edgar Allan Poe, or 
who ever heard of William James and Pragmatism ? 
I may be doing an injustice to the stable-men of 
Boston, but I doubt it. 

There are scores of pages of notes to my hand, 
recounting similar if not such startling examples 
of the German temperament among high and low. 
Musical, melancholic, gregarious, subjective, these 
are their true characteristics, but the superficial 
among us do not see these things because they are 
hidden behind the great army, the new navy and 
mercantile marine, the factories, the increased com- 
mercial values, the strenuous agricultural and in- 
dustrial pushing ahead of the last thirty years. 
But they are there, they represent the German tem- 
perament, they are the internal character of Ger- 
mania, always to be taken into account in judging 
her, or in wondering why she does this or that, or 
fahy she does it in this or that way. 

" As imagination bodies forth 
The forms of things unknown, the poet's peri 
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
A local habitation and a name." 

3 86 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 

This is what the purely subjective mind is ever do- 
ing, and when it is carried too far it is insanity. 
The individual no longer sees things as they are, 
but he sees others and himself in strange, horrible, 
or ludicrous shapes. 

Barring Japan, I suppose Germany yields more 
easily to the temptation of the subjective malady 
of suicide than any other country. In Saxony, for 
example, the rate was lately 39.2 per 100,000 of 
the population, in England and Wales 7.5. Dur- 
ing the five years ending with 1908 there were 
for every 100 suicides among males in the United 
States 136 in Germany, and for every 100 suicides 
of females 125 in Germany. In Vienna, and for 
racial purposes this is Germany, 1,558 persons killed 
themselves in 19 12. Children committing suicide 
because they have failed in their examinations is 
not uncommon in Germany; in America and in 
England the teachers are more likely to succumb 
than the children. We do not commit suicide in 
America from any sense of shame at our intellectual 
shortcomings — what a decimating of the popula- 
tion there would be if we did! — it is more apt to 
be caused by ill health consequent upon a straining 
chase for dollars. In Prussia during the five years, 
1 902-1907, divorce increased from 17.7 to 20.8 per 
100,000 inhabitants, and suicide from 20 to 30.7. 

If the observer does not take this difference of 
temperament into account, he does not realize how 
new and strange it is to find Germany these days, 
making its first and strongest impression upon the 
outsider by its industrial progress. The more in- 

387 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

telligent men in Germany are beginning to see the 
dangers to real progress in such feverish devotion 
to industry, and to recognize that the life of the 
population is absorbed too largely by science, fi- 
nance, and commerce. To see so much of the in- 
telligence of the nation exercising itself in material 
researches, to see such undue fervor in calculations 
of self-interest, does not leave an enlivening impres- 
sion. Such an ideal of life is paltry in itself and in- 
volves grave dangers in the future. It is a long 
stride in the wrong direction since Hegel wrote of 
Germany as " the guardian of the sacred fire of in- 
tellect." 

Out of this temperament has grown the self- 
consciousness, the uneasy vanity, the " touchiness " 
which has made Germany of late years the despair 
of the diplomats all over the world. She has be- 
come a chameleon-like menace to peace everywhere 
in the word. What she wants, what will offend her 
dignity, when she will feel hurt, what amount of 
consideration will suffice, when she will change color 
to match a changed situation, and in what color 
she will choose to hide her plans or to make mani- 
fest her demands, no man knows. She will not see 
things as they are, but always as an exhalation from 
her own mind. As one of her own poets has writ- 
ten : " Deutschland ist Hamlet." 

At this present moment she does not see either 
England or America as they are, quite peaceably 
disposed toward her but she sees them, and per- 
sists in seeing them, as they would be were Ger- 
many in their place. She is forever looking into 

3 88 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 

a mirror instead of through the open window. 
" The mailed fist/' " the rattling of the sabre," " the 
friend in shining armor," " querelle allemande," 
are all phrases born in Germany in the last thirty 
years. 

She even sees herself a little out of focus, and 
though I admit her precarious position in the heart 
of Europe, she exaggerates the necessity for her 
autocratic military government to meet the situa- 
tion. That philosophical and literary radical Lord 
Morley, now wearing a coronet, in the land where 
logic is a foundling and compromise a darling, 
writes : "A weak government throws power to some- 
thing which usurps the name of public opinion, and 
public opinion as expressed by the ventriloquists of 
the newspapers is at once more capricious and more 
vociferous than it ever was." This, strange to say, 
is exactly the opinion of the German autocrats, who 
maintain that no democracy can be a strong military 
power. It remains for England, and perhaps later 
America, to prove her wrong. 

The sovereign lady Get mania, being of this tem- 
per and disposition, of this psychological make-up, 
let us look at her dealings with certain embarrassing 
problems in her own household. The over-stimu- 
lation of ill-regulated mental activity as the result 
of regimental education is one of the minor prob- 
lems. Some fourteen million dollars worth of cheap 
and nasty literature is peddled by the agents of cer- 
tain publishing houses, and sold all over Germany 
to those recently taught to read but not trained to 
think; and this, it is to be remembered, is still a 

389 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

land of low wages, of strict economies, and of small 
expenditures on books. For Germany that is an 
enormous sum and represents a very wide-spread 
evil. I recognize that it is not only in Germany, 
but in France, England, and America, that the 
ethically hysterical have assumed that modesty and 
health and common-sense are characteristics of the 
intellectually mediocre. That the neglect of all, 
and the breaking of some, of the Ten Command- 
ments is essential to the creation of art or literature, 
or necessary to a courageous freedom of living, is 
a contention with which I agree less and less the 
more I know of art, literature, and life. But, as 
I have remarked elsewhere in this volume, the 
Strindbergs and Wildes and Gorkis are having their 
day in Germany just now, and beneath this again 
is this large distribution of the lawless and sooty 
literature, frankly intended as a debauch for the 
gutter-snipe and his consort. Even the coarse, and 
in no line squeamish, Rabelais wrote that, " Science 
sans conscience n'est que ruine de Tame." 

There is but a puny barrier against this, for the 
statistical year-book of German cities gives the num- 
ber of public libraries in forty-two cities as 179= 
Twenty-seven of these cities gave an annual sup- 
port to 114 of these libraries of only $64,847! 
According to the figures of Herr Ernest Schultze, 
in 1907 the forty largest German cities, with a popu- 
lation of 11,380,000, had public libraries containing 
a sum total of 807,000 volumes. In the year 1906- 
I 9°7» 5>437>°°° volumes were taken out and 1,607,- 
476 persons frequented the public reading-rooms, 

390 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 

and in these forty-two cities $280,095 were con- 
tributed from private sources for such library pur- 
poses. In 1910 Germany had in some 400 cities, 
each of more than 10,000 inhabitants, about 650 
public libraries and reading-rooms, with together 
about 3,250,000 volumes. 

Berlin has thirty public libraries with 231,300 
volumes; the number of books taken out in 19 10 
was 1,655,000. Hamburg has one public library 
with 100,000 volumes, of which 1,364,000 were 
taken out. Breslau has 7 libraries and 4 reading- 
rooms, with 75,578 volumes. Leipzig has 7 libraries 
and 3 reading-rooms, with 42,100 volumes. Mu- 
nich has 6 libraries and 26,671 volumes. Cologne 
has 7 libraries and 6 reading-rooms, with 24,898 
volumes. 

The smallest library is in the village community 
of Dudweiler, in the Rhine province, which con- 
tains 132 volumes for the 22,000 inhabitants. 

There were 14,941 books published in Germany 
in 1880, 18,875 in 1890, 24,792 in 1900, and 31,- 
281 in 1910. 

There were 13,470 books published in America 
in 1910, 9,209 of them by American authors. 

There were 10,914 books published in England 
in 191 1, of which 2,384 were new editions. Of 
this number 2,215, which includes 933 new editions 
and 40 translations, were fiction; religion, 930; 
sociology, 725; science, 650; geography, 601; bi- 
ography, 476; history, 429; technology, 525. In 
1820, there were only 26 novels published in En- 
gland. 

391 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Of the 31,281 books published in Germany in 
1910, 4,852 dealt with education and juvenile lit- 
erature; 4,134, belles-lettres; 3,215, law and polit- 
ical economy; 2,510, theology; 2,082, commerce 
and industry; 1,981, medicine; 1,884, philology and 
literary history; 1,480, geography, including maps; 
667, military science and equestry; 1,030, agricul- 
ture and forestry; 1,750, natural science and mathe- 
matics; 1,108, engineering and construction; 1,254, 
history and biography; 981, art; and 668 on philoso- 
phy and theosophy. 

There were some 9,000 writers of books in Amer- 
ica in 19 10, or one author in 10,000 of the popula- 
tion, already more than enough; there were some 
8,000 in Great Britain, or one author in about 5,500 
of the population ; while in Germany there are over 
31,000 writers, or one author in every 2,097 °f the 
population, including men, women, and children of 
all ages, an unreasonable and disastrous proportion. 
If we estimate the number of adult males of Ger- 
many at 14,000,000, the number who voted at the 
last election, then there was one author to every 
450, a most unhealthy proportion, and bearing out 
exactly what has been said of the German tempera- 
ment and constitutional bias. Furthermore, this ac- 
counts for the fact that Germany imports some 
700,000 agricultural laborers each year to garner 
the food harvests, for which she has not sufficient 
recruits, and who, by the way, take out of the coun- 
try each year some $35,000,000 in wages. Twenty 
per cent, of the miners in Westphalia are foreigners, 
eight per cent, of them Italians, and there are nearly 

392 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 

half a million foreigners employed as common la- 
borers in the various industries of Germany. 

Wherever one travels now in the world, he finds 
that most courageous and self-sacrificing of all the 
pioneers, the missionary : American, British, French, 
Italian. The best of them, on the plains of North 
America, in the destructive climate of India, in 
China, in all the islands of all the seas, are, what- 
ever their creed, soldiers of whom we are all proud; 
for they fight not only against the overwhelming 
prejudice of those whom they seek to save, but 
against the wide-spread prejudice of their own peo- 
ple, and against the well-founded suspicion and con- 
tempt aroused by their own black sheep. I have 
found them, here a Jesuit, there a Presbyterian, 
winning my friendship and my admiration, despite 
fundamental differences of belief about many things. 
There are few Germans among them! Even in 
this field Germany produces theological controver- 
sialists whom we have all studied, orthodox and 
destructive, but few pioneers, and practically no 
Augustines or Loyolas, Wesleys or Booths, Living- 
stones or Stanleys. Columba, an Irish refugee, 
founded on the island of Iona, off the west coast of 
Scotland, a mission station, whence went mission- 
aries and preachers to the conversion not only of 
England, but of the tribes of Germany. It was only 
in the sixth century that the Franks, only in the 
ninth century that the Saxons, and only in the tenth 
century that the Danes became Christians. 

Neither at home nor abroad are her successes 
those which deal with men by winning their al- 

393 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

legiance, their submission, their loyalty, or their 
respectful regard. She is pre-eminent in the things 
of the mind, in subjective matters, and in her reg- 
imental dealings with, and arrangements for, the 
inanimate side of life. 

As an example on the credit side of her governing 
is the very complete and successful system of land- 
banks, introduced by Frederick the Great and since 
modelled somewhat upon the French methods, which 
have protected the farmer from usury, insured him 
money at low rates for improvements, for the pur- 
chase of tools, cattle, and fertilizers, and enabled 
him to do, by sensible co-operation, what would have 
been impossible for him as an individual. So suc- 
cessful has been this co-operation between the banks 
and the united farming communities that it were 
well worth a chapter of description were it not 
that, through the initiative of President Taft and 
the able and industrious assistance of our officials 
in Europe, among whom our ambassador in Paris, 
Mr. Herrick, may be mentioned as untiring, there 
will shortly appear a complete exposition and ex- 
planation of the scheme, available for those of my 
countrymen interested in the matter. Or if they 
will journey to Ireland they may see there what Sir 
Horace Plunkett has done to revolutionize, and 
against tremendous odds, agriculture. And, be it 
noted, it has been done, with emphatic warnings 
against the modern fallacy of leaning upon state 
aid. It is estimated that our farmers would be saved 
between $20,000,000 and $40,000,000 a year in in- 
terest alone were we to adopt similar methods of 

394 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 

loaning to the land-owners. The Preussische Cen- 
tralgenossenschaftskasse, or Central Bank of Co- 
operative Associations, has revolutionized, one may 
here use the word without exaggeration, agricul- 
tural methods, throughout Prussia and Germany. 

In Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa there are 5,000,- 
000 acres of land in wheat, which is practically the 
size of Germany's wheat acreage, but Germany pro- 
duces 140,000,000 bushels of wheat off her parcel 
of land; while the wheat raised on the same area 
in these three States is only 55,000,000 bushels. 

France and Minnesota each plant 16,000,000 
acres in wheat, but France produces 324,000,000 
bushels and Minnesota 188,000,000 bushels. In 
round numbers we support 90,000,000 people on 
3,000,000 square miles of land, and we could sup- 
port 150 per square mile just as easily as 30, and 
even then there would be not even a fraction of the 
density of population of Denmark, 178; the Nether- 
lands, 470; France, 189; Saxony, 830; England and 
Wales, 405.6. The average wheat yield of our 
country is about 14 bushels per acre in good years, 
it might just as well be 25 ; the average cotton yield 
is about four-tenths of a bale per acre, and four 
times that amount could be raised as easily. 

In 1900, 10,500,000 people were engaged in agri- 
culture in America, or 35.7 per cent, of the popula- 
tion; as over against 37.7 in 1890 and 44.3 in 1880. 
Of these 10,500,000, 5,700,000 were owners, renters, 
or overseers, or 56 per cent., and only 4,500,000 
were actual farm laborers; and more than half of 
these, or 2,350,000, were members of the family, 

395 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

leaving only some 2,000,000 actual agricultural 
wage-earners, or employable agricultural laborers. 
Five-eighths of these were under twenty-five years 
of age, and of the white regular workers only one- 
tenth were over thirty-five years of age. This 
shows how unstable is the foundation of our agri- 
cultural prosperity, the chief asset of plenty and 
contentment of our country. Mr. Get-Rich-Quick 
has moved on to the shifting and more exciting 
opportunities of the cities, where poor human na- 
ture, aided and abetted by weak philanthropy, and 
demagogic fishing for votes by eleemosynary legis- 
lation, provides him with a mild form of riotous 
living, and a fatted calf of doles in case of accident, 
sickness, penury, or old age. 

In our American cities of over 8,000 inhabitants 
the increase in population from 1790 to 1900 has 
been from 3.4 per cent, to 33 per cent. In cities 
of 2,500 and over the increase from 1880 to 1900 
has been from 29.3 per cent, to 40.2 per cent. In 
the State of New York the farming population is 
smaller than ever before, and in parts of New En- 
gland it is smaller than one hundred years ago. In 
1909 there were 15,000 deserted farms with a total 
of 1,130,000 acres. The average size of farms in 
the United States in 1850 was 212 acres; in 1890, 
121 acres. Wages in the reaping season on fruit, 
grain, and cotton farms are enormous, running to 
four and five dollars a day. We are behind every 
country in Europe except Russia, in our agricul- 
tural methods. Some day the American people will 
discover, may it not be too late, that the tall talk 

396 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 

and highfalutin boastings of the politicians and 
alien journalists in their midst do nothing to make 
two blades of grass grow where one grew before. 

Germany may not have solved this problem, in- 
deed no nation which offers undue legislative al- 
leviation for human frailty will ever solve it, but 
at least she has not shirked the problem, and presents 
for our enlightenment a scheme in full and smooth 
working order. 

In dealing with German problems it is fair to 
give examples where her methods have been wholly 
and entirely successful. The man who does not 
know one tree or shrub from another cannot travel 
in trains, motor-cars, or afoot without remarking 
the neatness, symmetry, and the flourishing con- 
dition of the forests. In these matters Germany 
so far surpasses us that we may be said to be merely 
in a kindergarten stage of development. As early 
as 1783 a German traveller, Johann David Schoepf, 
was distressed to see the waste of valuable wood in 
America. He tells of a furnace in New Jersey 
which exhausted a forest of nearly 20,000 acres in 
twelve to fifteen years, and goes on to prophesy the 
grave danger to America unless coal is discovered 
and used instead of wood. 

The public forests in America contain about nine 
per cent, of the total land area and about twenty- 
five per cent, of the forest area of the country. In 
Germany the state owns about 40 per cent, of the 
forests, and nearly 70 per cent, of the forest area is 
under state control. The total forest area of the 
empire is 34,569,800 acres, and two-thirds bear 

397 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

pine, larch, and red and white fir. In a recent year 
the Federal States made a net profit of $38,250,000 
from public lands and forests, and the entire profit 
from the German forests was estimated at $110,- 
000,000. When one remembers that Germany is 
less than the size of Texas, and that from her forests 
alone, in one year, she received an income equal to 
more than one-tenth of our total national expendi- 
ture for that same year, the fact of our childish 
wastefulness is brought home to us, and makes a 
patriot feel that a Gifford Pinchot should be given 
a free hand. I can only write of the subject as one 
technically entirely ignorant, but that Germany is 
a university of forestry is not only attested by the 
demand for her teachers in India, and in America, 
and elsewhere in the world, but by the condition of 
the forests themselves all over Germany, which no 
traveller, from America at any rate, can fail to 
notice without surprise and delight. 

Germany, like the rest of us, has been obliged 
to face the various social problems that arise from 
original sin, but which vote-getters are pleased to 
ascribe to industrial progress. In our country, with 
a population of some thirty to the square mile, while 
in the kingdom of Saxony the density of the popu- 
lation is 830.6 to the square mile, it is hard to be- 
lieve that we suffer from overcrowding so much as 
from overindulgence, wastefulness, and fussy legis- 
lation. None the less, we have 42 institutions for 
the feeble-minded, 115 schools and homes for the 
deaf and blind, 350 hospitals for the insane, 1,200 
refuge houses, 1,300 prisons, 1,500 hospitals, and 

398 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 

2,500 almshouses. We have 2,000,000 annually 
who are cared for in homes and hospitals, 300,000 
insane and feeble-minded, 160,000 blind or deaf, 
80,000 prisoners, and 100,000 paupers in alms- 
houses and out, and we spend each year about $100,- 
000,000 in taking care of them. We are as waste- 
ful and careless in these matters as we have been 
until very lately in our forestry methods. 

In the early days of the empire Germany under- 
took to deal with these social problems. The Ger- 
man Empire took over some of the principles of 
socialism, but retained, and retains absolutely, the 
power of applying those principles. Bismarck him- 
self admitted that his advocacy of the industrial 
insurance laws was selfish. " My idea was to bribe 
the working classes, or shall I say to win them over, 
to regard the state as a social institution exist- 
ing for their sake and interested in their wel- 
fare." Whatever else may have resulted, discon- 
tent, whether well-founded or not, is not now under 
discussion, has not been lessened. In 19 12 more 
than one-half of the electors voted " discontented " 
as over against the less than one-half who voted 
" contented." The mass of the people may be bet- 
ter clothed, better fed, better housed, better cared 
for in sickness and in old age, than formerly, but 
they are not satisfied. No state can go much fur- 
ther than Germany has gone along the lines of state 
interference, guidance, and control of the personal 
affairs of its people, and nothing is more surprising 
about the whole matter than the general acceptance 
in America and in England of such legislation as 

399 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

having proved altogether successful. I doubt if any 
intelligent German considers these various pension 
schemes as altogether successful. I can vouch for 
it that many German statesmen make no such claims 
in private, whatever they may say in public. 

Some of the barren figures, needing no comment, 
are of interest in this connection. The cost of in- 
surance in Germany has risen to over $500,000 a 
day, the total cost of state insurance exceeding 
$250,000,000 a year at the present time, a fairly 
heavy tax upon small employers. In 1909, of 422,- 
076 decisions by the industrial unions, 76,352 were 
appealed against, and of the 100,000 arbitration 
judgments, 22,794 were appealed against. So dif- 
ficult is it to settle to the claimant's satisfaction the 
amount of salve necessary for his particular wound 
when, as is true in these cases, the salve is a grant 
of money for a longer or shorter period! 

In 1886 there were, roughly, 100,000 accidents 
reported and 10,000 compensated, but as they be- 
came more thoroughly acquainted with the game, 
the figures rose in 1908 to 662,321 accidents and 
142,965 compensations. 

The vast increase of the claims -for trifling in- 
juries is shown by the fact that in twenty years 
from 1888 to 1908, despite the increase of the total 
compensation from $1,475,000 to $38,715,000, the 
average compensation per accident fell from $58.50 
to $38.83. In the two years 1907 to 1909 the num- 
ber of members of those state-insured increased by 
380,819, while the days of sickness increased by 26,- 
219,632 ! The cost of sickness insurance alone rose 

400 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 

from $42,895,000 in 1900 to $83,640,000 in 1909. 
The Workmen's Compensation Act in England costs, 
for management, commission, legal and medical 
fees, $20,000,000 a year, while the compensation 
paid out was $13,500,000. The insurance com- 
panies calculate that for every $500 of compensa- 
tion, the employers have paid $750! 

It is becoming increasingly evident that the logi- 
cal result of state charity, or call it state insurance 
to avoid controversy, over a large field, and includ- 
ing millions of beneficiaries and claimants, is that 
the army of officials, the expenses of administra- 
tion, and the payments themselves must sooner or 
later break the back of the state morally, politically, 
and financially. It rapidly increases parasitism 
among the receivers; makes a powerful though in- 
different army of state servants of the distributers; 
and loses financially to the state far more in ex- 
pense of administration, and loss of useful labor 
of the army of civil servants, than it gains by the 
loss to the state of individual incapacity resulting 
in pauperism and invalidism, which must be cared 
for. To put it briefly, it is far more dangerous to 
the state to tell the individual that he shall be taken 
care of than to tell him that he must shift for him- 
self. As for the effect upon the individual, it is a 
lowering medicine, making the patient gradually 
dependent upon the drug, and bringing him finally 
to the incurable invalidism of surly apathy. To 
change Patrick Henry's fiery peroration slightly: 
Give me liberty or in the end you give me moral 
and political death. 

401 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Students of the various forms of this modern 
political nostrum, of getting rid of the fools who are 
rich by deceiving the fools who are poor, will re- 
member the decree of the Provisional Government 
of the French Republic in 1848: "This Govern- 
ment undertakes to guarantee the existence of the 
workman by work. It undertakes to guarantee 
work to every citizen." On March 9 public works 
were started and 3,000 men employed. March 15 
saw 14,000 on the pay-rolls, most of them unoc- 
cupied because there was no suitable work. Those 
not working received " inactivity pay " of a franc 
a day. The end of April saw 100,000 on the pay- 
rolls. In May a minister ventured to suggest that 
it was the workman's duty to work! There were 
murmurs of disapproval, but the public treasury 
was nearing bankruptcy, and on June 22 an order 
was promulgated, that all of these workmen between 
the ages of seventeen and twenty-five were to en- 
list in the army. An insurrection followed this 
order that workmen should work, and 3,000 citi- 
zens were shot down in the streets, and another 
3,000 were sent to penal colonies in Algeria. The 
French are a logical people. The state promised 
suitable work; that always means, from the point 
of view of the worker, agreeable work, and not too 
fatiguing at that. Of course, no such thing is pos- 
sible, and the end was riot, murder, and penal servi- 
tude. The state can no more provide suitable and 
agreeable methods of livelihood for its citizens, than 
it can provide them with a duty-loving, unenvious, 
and honest disposition. As I have remarked else- 

402 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 

where, the only thing that stands between state so- 
cialism and the instant solution of all our social 
problems is human nature! This mongrel demand 
for an artificial equality, is worse, because more 
degrading than any tyranny of church or state even. 
Every man wants superiority and distinction for 
himself, he only wants equality, invisibility, and in- 
articulateness for others. 

When some such system as this is put to work 
in Ireland^ I shall envy every physician in Ireland, 
for he will live in a joyous round of farces such as 
the world has never provided before for the lovers 
of the humorous. Already Ireland, with only 701,- 
620 electors, out of a total of 8,058,025 in the 
United Kingdom, is represented in the House of 
Commons by 103 members out of the total of 670; 
and out of the 935,000 old-age pensioners on the 
lists at the beginning of 1912, Ireland had 202,810, 
and was drawing $12,943,000 out of the total paid of 
$59,445,500, while the total population of Ireland 
was 4,368,599, and of the rest of the United King- 
dom 40,533,557! Further, as an example of the 
slight value of education in the game of politics, 
out of the 41,710 illiterate voters in the United 
Kingdom, Ireland has 22,515. Long life to Ire- 
land for her gallant attack upon humbuggery with 
humbuggery ! And this is, too, the little island that 
sent the Wellesleys, the Pallisers, the Moores, the 
Eyres, the Cootes, the Napiers, the Wolseleys, and 
Roberts to fight England's battles, and half the 
officers and privates who conquered India; which 
in the Seven Years' War furnished Austria with her 

403 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

best generals (Brown, Lacy, O'Donnell), and whose 
exiles, called the " Wild Geese/' flocked to the stand- 
ard of Washington in 1776. This is proof positive 
that they are not naturally a parasitic race. 

Even in Germany, where there is not a tithe of 
the impish humour that exists in Ireland, the So- 
cialists have so misused the immense bureaucracy 
that must carry on the mere clerical work of in- 
surance, that a new law passed the Reichstag in 
June, 191 1, containing several hundred amend- 
ments. Employers must now pay one-half instead 
of one-third of the sickness insurance premiums, 
which gives them one-half instead of one-third of 
the management authority. 

The management had degenerated into a mere 
game of politics, with the Socialists in such dispro- 
portionate control that they were rapidly turning 
the insurance machinery into a well-organized body 
for the exploitation of their own political doctrines ; 
and the employer and the state were helpless. It 
is, therefore, amusing to the man on the spot to 
find certain English writers offering as proof of the 
success of the insurance laws the fact that the So- 
cialists, who once opposed, are now satisfied with 
them. Of course they are satisfied with them. They 
have had a war-chest and weapons put into their 
hands such as they have never had before. Nor 
have these detailed parchment solutions of social 
questions done away with all the tramps, poor, 
sick, and destitute. Over a million persons passed 
through the municipal night shelters in Berlin dur- 
ing the last year ; and there are still admittedly some 

404 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 

5,000 tramps in Germany. The vicious circle is in 
evidence in Germany as elsewhere. It might be 
possible to regulate men's earning power by legisla- 
tion, but even when this colossal task is done, there 
must follow the regulation of the spending power to 
make it complete. What conceivable legislative 
regulation can efface the difference between what 
A, B, and C will get out of five dollars once they 
have them! That is the real problem, but no one 
proposes a solution of it. A will use his five dol- 
lars to make him more powerful, B will use his in 
dissipation, and C will lose his. How is that to be 
regulated? And without that regulation you will 
have rich men and tramps all over again. 

In urban and rural districts containing over 10,- 
000 inhabitants, some $40,000,000 was expended 
for sick and poor relief, and this does not include 
the hundreds of districts with fewer than 10,000 
inhabitants for which there are no figures. Even 
the wholly admirable Elberfeld system of charity, 
known all over the world to charity-workers, which 
is, briefly, investigation of cases by voluntary 
workers personally and privately, and each dealing 
with a small number, has not solved the problem. 
There were 1,537 strikes in Germany in 1909, and 
2,109 in 1 9 10. In 19 10, 8,269 industrial plants were 
affected, in which 372,119 persons were employed, 
and 2,209 plants were obliged to shut down entirely. 
There were as many as 154,093 persons on strike 
at the same time. In 19 10 there were also 1,121 
lock-outs, affecting 10,381 plants and 314,988 per- 
sons. 

405 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Here again, as in the case of the temperament 
of the German people, one must look deeper than 
the average traveller has the time or the necessary 
experience back of him to do, in order to see and 
to sift the facts. Scores of travellers have told me: 
" I have never seen a tramp, a beggar, a drunken 
man in Germany/' I can only reply that I have 
seen tramps at large, and colonies of them besides; 
that I have seen hundreds of the poverty-stricken 
and diseased ; that there are more than thirty drunk- 
ards' homes in Germany; and that between 1879 
and 1 90 1 the number of persons under treatment for 
alcoholism had increased from 12,000 to 65,000, 
an increase of 500 per cent. ; the cases of heart dis- 
ease and rheumatism increased by 600 per cent.; 
while the total population had increased 33 per cent. 
There are 125,000 patients admitted to the public 
and private lunatic asylums of Germany, and there 
are accommodations in public and private hospitals 
for 1,300,000 in-patients passing through them in 
the year; in 1909, 544,183 persons were tried before 
the courts of first instance and convicted, of whom 
49,697 were between twelve and eighteen years of 
age; and in the same year there were 183,700 illegit- 
imate births and 14,225 suicides, or 22.3 per 100,000 
of the population. The poor law authorities state 
that the cost to the empire of alcoholism in all its 
forms of poverty, crime, and disease amounts to 
some $13,000,000 a year. In 1910 Germany con- 
sumed 1,704 million gallons of malt liquors, the 
United States 1,851 million gallons; of beer we con- 
sumed 20.09 gallons and Germany 26.47 gallons per 

406 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 

capita. Germany's drink bill even ten years ago was 
$560,000,000 for beer, $140,000,000 for spirits, and 
$125,000,000 for wine. There is a wine, beer, or 
spirit dealer in Berlin for every 157 of the inhab- 
itants, men, women, and children. It has always 
been the avowed policy of autocracies to atone for 
the lack of political freedom by lax regulations in re- 
gard to moral matters. The citizen is imprisoned for 
insulting the state, but he may insult his own per- 
son by dissipation up to any limit, this side of 
disorderliness in public. Drinking, gambling, and 
other forms of vice are provided for the citizens 
of Berlin comfortably and, comparatively speaking, 
cheaply. Lotteries are sanctioned by all the states, 
and they use this incentive to the worst form of 
gambling for all sorts of purposes, from repairing 
churches to building patriotic monuments, and re- 
plenishing the treasury. 

This is by no means an attack upon Germany or 
upon German methods in these matters; probably 
both in America and in England we are worse off 
in these respects than are they, but unprejudiced 
people will agree that it is high time to learn that 
not even German methods have solved these com- 
plicated and heatedly argued questions of social 
reform. Germany, due to its compactness and well- 
drilled and subservient population, should succeed 
if any nation can, for social legislation has never 
been in stronger or wiser hands or more admirably 
and honestly administered. In America such op- 
portunities offered to the on-politics-living big and 
little bosses would lead swiftly to anarchy. We 

407 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

have laws enough now, but the baser politicians 
protect our city tramps, our gunmen, our decadents, 
our incendiaries against our elected magistrates, in 
order that they may keep ready to hand, and in- 
crease, the raw material of a purchasable vote, by 
the domination and protection of which they keep 
themselves in power. That is the whole secret of 
our municipal misgovernment wherever it exists, and 
also the reason for our barbarous crimes. We have 
a cowed magistracy seeking re-election from the 
manipulators of the purchasable voters. 

The truth is that the Sacculina method of social 
reform is nowhere a success, certainly not in Ger- 
many. The Sacculina is a crustacean. It attaches 
itself in the form of a simple sac to the crab y into 
which its blood-vessels extend. It loses its power 
of locomotion and its limbs disappear. It lives at 
the expense of the crab; activity is not necessary, 
and it becomes the highest type of parasite, with 
no organs except ovaries and blood-vessels. It can 
propagate, but has lost all power or desire to do 
anything else. We have succeeded in producing no 
small number of people of the Sacculina type by 
playing social and political crab for them, and we 
are on the way to produce more, until the crab is ex- 
hausted and the Sacculina is shaken into the water 
to sink or swim for himself. " Charity causes half 
the suffering she relieves, but she can never relieve 
half the suffering she causes.' ' 

Compulsory insurance was tried in the practical 
and economical Swiss city of Basle and given up, 
because it was found that each year it was the same 

408 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 

small class who reaped the benefit of the insurance. 
The crab gained nothing and the Sacculina became 
rapidly impotent. Basle, if I mistake not, will have 
imitators, inclined to the philosophy of Frederick 
the Great, who was surely no enemy to rational 
progress, but who once said : " Depuis bien long- 
temps je suis convainou qu'un mal qui reste vaut 
mieux qu'un bien qui change/' 

A good deal of modern legislation is due to 
fatigue, and some of the rest to ill-founded appre- 
hension, that unless there is a change of some kind 
the masters of the legislators will discharge them, 
because they do not furnish enough novelties. In 
the meantime nobody is bold enough to proclaim to 
the restless ones, seeking ever some new thing, that 
there is nothing original except what has been for- 
gotten. The originality of such students of history, 
and panderers to majorities, as the leaders of the 
discontented in England, Germany and in America, 
dates back to about the time of the fall of Pericles 
and the Athenian republic. 

The cry of " discontent " has become a fetich 
among unthinking politicians. We are all, thank 
God, discontented, and a poor lot we should be if we 
were not. The workingman's discontent has been 
over-emphasized, for the reason that what he de- 
mands is material, ponderable, for sale, easy to see, 
and not far out of the reach of one's hand. He 
wants more rooms, more meat, more tobacco, more 
beer, more leisure. I am glad he does want them, 
and let me say just once, in answer to my detractors 
along these lines, that the workingman has no heart- 

409 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

ier champion than am I. I applaud his discon- 
tent just as I cherish my own, for "it is precisely 
this that keeps us all alive! " It is just because I 
wish him well that every ounce of my influence 
and experience are his, to open his eyes to the 
demagogues who fatten upon him, fool him, rope 
him, throw him and brand him, as they have done 
in Germany, as they are attempting to do in En- 
gland, and as they will shortly begin to do in Amer- 
ica. State socialism means slavery for him, with 
an army of officials living on him. He will be 
given so much bread, and beer, and meat, and to- 
bacco; so much music, theatre, and literature; and 
there will grow up an army whose business it will 
be to keep him in order, and to cut him down if 
he revolts, as was done by the police in one of the 
suburbs of Berlin not long ago. The German work- 
man is already so entangled in the ropes of insur- 
ance, so harried by petty officials, so branded by the 
police, and he has permitted to increase such a host 
of guardians, that revolt or revolution is practically 
impossible. Counting the army, navy, and officials, 
there are said to be three million officials, great and 
small in Germany; and there are fourteen million 
electors, or, roughly, one policeman to every five 
adults. And those three million policemen, armed 
with lethal and legal weapons, are inflexibly and 
unalterably for no change. Does the workingman 
ever stop to think that those officials draw salaries 
amounting to something like $1,200,000,000 a year, 
and is he still fool enough to think that he does not 
pay those salaries to these slave-drivers! I tawe 

410 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 

said that the population is well fed, well clothed, and 
well looked after. Of course they are. No slave- 
owner so maltreats his slaves that they cannot work 
for him! But is man fed by bread alone, even in 
the sugared form of music and theatricals? 

If the socialist Pygmalion ever succeeds in bring- 
ing his statue to life, how she will scorn him, hate 
his suffocating environment, wish for the wealth 
and softness he cannot give, desert him, begging 
to return to her marble tomb again. 

Long life to discontent, say I; but is the work- 
ingman such a fool that his eyes are not opened 
when a man of Bismarck's way of thinking, when 
an autocrat like the Emperor have favored state 
socialism! Does he not see that socialism is the 
neatest hangman of them all to strangle his dis- 
content ! Does he not see the demagogue gradually 
assuming the features and the powers of the tyrant! 
Tyranny is not alone the prerogative of an aristoc- 
racy. " It is the place of a court to make its ser- 
vants insignificant. If the people should fall into 
the same humor, and should choose their servants 
on the same principles of mere obsequiousness and 
flexibility, and total vacancy and indifference of 
opinion in all public matters, then no party of the 
state will be sound, and it will be vain to think of 
saving it." Thus writes Burke, the champion of 
our American revolt against his own country. The 
electors, now so flattered by the smooth phrases of 
their tyrants disguised as liberators, will one day 
be aghast to find themselves in a veritable house of 
correction paid for from their own savings. They 

411 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

will have learnt then, at last, that you cannot get 
rid of the fools who are rich by deceiving the fools 
who are poor; and corporalism will be found to be a 
harsher, fussier, a more meddlesome and a more 
indifferent tyrant than even feudalism. 

Even at the Krupp works at Essen, and the 
various branches elsewhere, where there is the most 
elaborate combination of Lady Bountiful and suc- 
cessful business anywhere in the world, men are not 
satisfied. If they are not contented there, then 
nowhere in this world will the workingman be con- 
tented. The Krupp business employs some 70,000 
persons. In the particular Essen works, for a hun- 
dred years, there has never been a strike, though 
others of their employees elsewhere have used the 
strike. Though the Cadburys and Levers and 
Taylors, in England, the Armours, the United 
States Steel Corporation, the National Cash Reg- 
ister Company, the Procter and Gamble Company, 
the General Electric Company, and others in Amer- 
ica, and the famous and successful adoption of 
co-operation in Monsieur Godin's iron foundry at 
Guise, in France, have worked along the lines of 
recognition of their workmen's right to participate 
in, the profits, there is nothing on such an elaborate 
scale as at Essen, under the regime of the Krupps. 

From 1904 to 19 10 the Krupps spent, for bene- 
ficial institutions of all kinds, $14,250,000, or 56 
per cent, of the dividends during that time. I have 
passed many hours at Essen, and seen thoroughly, 
from cellar to attic, this truly noble institution for 
the comfortable and safe guardianship of men, wo- 

412 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 

men, and children who are at the same time factors 
in a huge and successful industrial enterprise. There 
are schools, technical schools, hospitals, convales- 
cent homes, a library with 71,000 volumes, theatre, 
orchestra, band, lectures, concerts, pension and in- 
surance funds, lodgings for bachelors, tenements 
and dwellings for married people, separate cot- 
tages for widows and widowers too old for work, 
and every opportunity, with a high rate of interest, 
for saving. There is in existence a co-operative 
store, as well managed as the co-operative stores at 
Tuxedo Park, and with much the same system of 
rebates. There are bathing facilities, gymnasium, 
a boat club, a system of providing hot meals from 
a central kitchen, reading-rooms and smoking-rooms. 
There is invested, not including the value of the 
land, which has risen enormously in value, over 
$12,500,000 in houses for the working-people, the 
return on the money being about 2^4 per cent. It 
would require volumes — indeed, two bulky volumes 
were issued last year by the company to celebrate 
the hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the 
Krupp works — to describe merely the machinery 
for making the people comfortable. 

In 185 1 the Krupps exhibited at the exposition 
in London the first cannon made of cast steel; now 
they turn out more shells and shrapnel in a week 
than were used at the whole battle of Koniggratz 
(Sadowa), which lasted from eight o'clock in the 
morning till four o'clock in the afternoon on July 
3, 1866. The queen of this, the greatest factory of 
destructive agencies in the world, is a gentle Ma- 

413 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

donna- faced lady who might well pose for a statue 
of peace, and whose loveliness is a mirror of the 
countless and untiring benefactions with which the 
people who work here are surrounded. Both the 
powers and the people of Germany may well be 
proud of the Krupps, for if sane beneficence were 
to be raised to the rank of statehood this great col- 
ony would well deserve the honor. The gross prof- 
its for the last year were $9,000,000, half of which 
was written off and the rest devoted to the reserve, 
to dividends, and to contributions to the invalid and 
pension funds of the employees, which now amount 
to $9,500,000. The employees also have on deposit 
with the management $8,700,000. The contribu- 
tion of the Krupps to the workmen's state-insur- 
ance fund amounted, in 19 10, to $1,320,000. The 
Krupp family is rich, but what would their wealth 
have been had they practiced the gobbling and jug- 
gling financial methods of ; but I will not 

pillory my own countrymen by name, for, after all, 
our political methods have made them, and not they 
themselves. 

The German manufacturer has been at a disad- 
vantage, too, for several reasons, and this may well 
be noted as one of Germany's problems. She has 
not the deposits of coal that have made England 
rich, nor the wonderful soil of America, from which 
alone we take $9,000,000,000 every year, nor 
France's population, now at a standstill, and which 
can feed itself off its own soil. She has been a 
large borrower of capital to finance her enormous 
expansion of industry and commerce, and, above 

414 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 

all, the gold supply of the world, which in the last 
resort is the foundation of credit, is not in her 
hands, nor can it be so long as British and Amer- 
ican fleets keep the ocean highways over which that 
gold travels. 

The world's gold output in 191 1 was $493,100,- 
000; of this $177,600,000 came from the Trans- 
vaal; $100,350,000 from the United States; $63,- 
600,000 from Australia; $42,300,000 from Rus- 
sia; $23,300,000 from Mexico; $35,600,000 from 
Rhodesia, India, and Canada; and $15,650,000 from 
Central and South America, or $458,000,000, of 
the total output of $493,100,000, from countries 
which in time of war would be unlikely to ship 
gold to Germany. More than one half the output 
comes from the British Empire alone. To those 
who are satisfied with the easy answer to the rea- 
son for the increased cost of living, that the output 
of gold has increased, it must be puzzling to learn 
that of the total output, in round numbers, of $500,- 
000,000, $150,000,000 is used in the arts and man- 
ufactures and $150,000,000 goes to India, where it 
is buried and hoarded, and $100,000,000 is retained 
in the United States for currency and other pur- 
poses. In spite of the fact that the gold output of 
the world doubled between 1890 and 1897, and 
nearly doubled again between 1897 and 191 1, money 
is dear, and is likely to be so long as present con- 
ditions last. 

The reason for the higher cost of living is to 
be found in the movement of the population, from 
the dulness of the plough to the sprightliness of the 

415 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

cinematograph. This choice every freeman has a 
right to make for himself, but the trouble arises 
when the politician comes forward and pays his 
admission to the cinematograph entertainment, out 
of the public funds, in order to get his vote. The 
man who does not leave the plough under those 
conditions is either a fool or a saint, and the per- 
centage of the growth of cities is a fair measure 
of their relative numbers. The increased cost of 
living is the result, not of too much gold, but of too 
little labor on the land, and this is due, in turn, to the 
voluptuous rhetoric of the political street- walkers, 
whose promises of pleasure are as illegitimate as 
they are impossible of fulfilment. A debtor nation 
like Germany is highly sensitive to these conditions, 
and just as she is overcoming, by her splendid suc- 
cess as a manufacturing nation this problem, she 
is met by increased and ever-increasing rivalry. 
America, in 1901, exported $466,000,000 of manu- 
factures; in 1891 only $188,000,000; but in 191 1, 
$910,000,000; and in 1912, $1,021,753,918. We 
now have in America 225,000 manufacturing 
plants employing 6,000,000 people, with an annual 
pay-roll of $3,500,000,000 and producing every 
twelve months $15,000,000,000 worth of goods. 
The total value of exports and imports of Japan 
thirty years ago was $30,000,000, or 87 cents per 
capita; in 191 1 the figures were $480,000,000, or 
$10 per capita. England during the years 191 1 and 
191 2 surpassed all previous figures both for exports 
and imports. Germany's rivals, it is thus seen, have 
not been idle. 

416 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 

The agricultural population of Germany in 1850 
was 65 in the 100; it is now less than one third. In 
1911, after a bad year for the farmers, Germany 
was obliged to pay out some $200,000,000 more than 
usual for food. The total loans of the German 
banks on industrial securities rose from $107,000,- 
000 in 1890 to $632,000,000 in 19 10, and bankers 
themselves admit that Germany has fallen into the 
error of seeking and accepting credit far beyond the 
value of the capital that they have to work with. 
Still more dangerous is the fact that 55 per cent, of 
the savings-bank moneys of Germany is locked up 
in mortgages. In 1907, 217 new companies were 
formed in Germany, issuing $62,050,900 in securi- 
ties; in 1909, 179 new companies issued $54,929,- 
450 of securities; in 1910, 186 new companies issued 
$57,437,700 of securities. In 1910, 340 companies 
increased their capital by $142,657,200. In 1910 
there were 5,295 companies in Germany with a 
nominal capital of $3,680,979,400. It is estimated 
that since 1895 there has been invested in industrial 
companies in Germany $1,200,000,000. It is to be 
said also that since 1897 German agricultural pro- 
duction has doubled, German industrial production 
increased sevenfold, and Germany is said to have 
$4,750,000,000 in her savings-banks. The value of 
imports for home consumption, exclusive of the 
precious metals, in 191 1 was $2,386,200,000; the 
value of the exports of home produce, exclusive of 
the precious metals, was $2,025,450,000. It is a 
quaint result of her temperament and her good 
forestry, that Germany sells $25,000,000 worth of 

417 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

toys a year; she is veritably the workshop of Santa 
Claus, and many more than 25,000,000 children 
would bless her did they know. 

German financiers affirm that she can stand alone 
financially, while others assert that one sixth of her 
capital, I have heard it placed at one third, is bor- 
rowed from France and England. It is certain at 
least that the American panic of 1907, and the re- 
cent war in the Near East, have seriously embar- 
rassed Germany financially. 

As Germany can only feed, even in good har- 
vest years, forty-eight or forty-nine millions of her 
people, a large proportion of her profits from in- 
dustry must necessarily go to the purchase of food 
for the other sixteen or seventeen millions. The 
consumption of meat has increased among all classes 
in Germany, and both the demands of the individual 
and of the state have increased with the increased 
wealth of the country. In Prussia alone the num- 
ber of those subject to income tax has increased 
from 2,400,000 in 1892 to 6,200,000 in 1912; but 
the taxes have increased as well, or from $800,000,- 
000 to $1,675,000,000. 

In the endeavor to increase the manufacturing 
output and to find new markets German credit has 
been stretched to a dangerous tenuity. While the 
war feeling was at its height the Kolnische Zeitung, 
a conservative and able journal, wrote : " In case 
of war both France and Germany will be obliged 
to borrow; but it is certain that the credit of Ger- 
many cannot as yet be compared with the credit of 
France: this is a strong guarantee of peace." 

418 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 

Wermuth, said by impartial judges to be the 
ablest secretary of the treasury the German Empire 
has had in a quarter of a century, resigned in 191 2, 
on the general ground that he would not be respon- 
sible for the finances of the empire, if it was pro- 
posed to continue the constant increase of national 
expenditure, by a constant increase of borrowing, 
and an ever-increasing amount of interest-bearing 
liabilities. He must have smiled to himself when 
an Imperial issue at four per cent, put out in Feb- 
ruary, 19 1 3, was not only not over-subscribed but 
not even all taken. 

Unlike the French, who invest their savings small 
and large in national loans, the Germans neglect 
even their own national loans, preferring the higher 
returns for their investments from the innumerable 
industries launched in modern Germany; so pro- 
nounced is this form of investment, that a director 
of the Deutsche Bank has warned his countrymen, 
that every month's profits are no sooner gained than 
they are put out again in new enterprises, either by 
the individuals themselves, or by the banks in which 
they are deposited. As a result, the liquid capital 
at the disposal of Germany is dangerously out of 
proportion to her borrowings and her working capi- 
tal. It shows a fine confidence in the future, and it 
proves what needs no proof : the immense industrial 
and commercial progress, and the immense sea- 
carrying trade of Germany. Germany is like a man 
with $1,000 in the bank to check upon, but doing 
business with $100,000 of borrowed capital, upon 
which he must pay interest, and out of which he 

419 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

must take his running expenses. Such a one has no 
provision for a bad year, and must depend upon 
more credit in case of trouble; and in the case of 
Germany, it may be added, his personal and family 
expenses have largely increased. The German im- 
perial debt had increased during the first twenty- 
two years of the present Emperor's reign, or from 
1888 to 1910, by $1,040,000,000, and of that sum 
some $650,000,000 were added in the ten years 
from 1900 to 1910, when Germany was building 
her fleet. 

Between the years 1905 and 19 10 the total ex- 
port trade of Germany increased by $408,225,000, 
but the whole of the increase was due to the heavier 
forms of manufactures : machinery, iron ware, coal- 
tar dyes, iron wire, steel rails, and raw iron. The 
increasing competition is shown by the fact that dur- 
ing those same years her exports of the finer man- 
ufactures, such as cotton and woollen goods, cloth- 
ing, gold and silver ware, porcelain, maps, prints, 
and the like, actually decreased by $66,975,000 ! 

I am not maintaining for a moment that these 
problems are peculiar to Germany, but merely 
that, owing to the rapid progress, they are aggra- 
vated, and that to point out Germany as a model 
of successful achievement, along these and other 
lines, in order to bolster up political cure-alls at 
home, is a betrayal of crass ignorance of the gen- 
eral internal situation of the country, and once such 
prejudiced pleaders are found out, the rebound will 
go too far the other way. That were a pity, too, 
for we have much to learn from Germany. 

420 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 

The $30,000,000 in gold in the Julius Tower at 
Spandau, called the war-chest, and the income from 
railroads, forests, and mines, are to be put down 
on the other side of the ledger, but as a year's 
war, it is calculated, would cost France, England, or 
Germany some $2,300,000,000 each, these sums are 
of negligible importance. 

The Prussian railways cost $2,250,000,000, and 
are now valued at twice that sum, and pay an 
average of seven per cent, on the invested capital. 
Maintenance costs are included in the total annual 
expenses, and there is no, so it is claimed, actual 
depreciation. Of the net revenue of $157,330,417 
in 1909, about $55,000,000 are transferred to the 
state revenue, out of which all charges of the state, 
including interest on bonds, are paid. The rest 
is used for new construction, sinking funds, re- 
serve funds, and so on. 

The report of the Interstate Commerce Commis- 
sion of 1909-1910 states that there are nearly $19,- 
000,000,000 of railway capital outstanding in 
America. There are 240,438 miles of single track 
in the United States; 59,000 locomotives, 35,000 
for freight, and a total of 2,290,000 cars of all 
kinds; and the railways carried in one year 971,- 
683,000 passengers and 1,850,000,000 tons of 
freight. In 191 o, 386 persons were killed, but, 
what is often forgotten, more than one half the 
total accidents were due to stealing rides and tres- 
passing on the tracks. The railways in the United 
States are our largest purchasers by far, and for 
every dollar they earn 42 cents is spent in wages, 

421 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

26 cents for material, raw or manufactured, before 
anything is given out for interest on loans or divi- 
dends. 

A first-class ticket in Germany is taxed 16 per 
cent, on the price of the ticket; a second-class ticket, 
8 per cent.; a third-class ticket, 4 per cent.; the 
fourth-class ticket, nothing. Crowded and uncom- 
fortable travelling in Germany is cheap; comfort- 
able travelling in Germany is very dear indeed. 
The herding of people in the fourth-class carriages 
in Germany resembles our cattle-cars rather than 
transportation for human beings. Such conditions 
would not be tolerated in America, but against 
these state-owned railways there is no redress. No 
luggage, except hand luggage, is carried free. Not 
once, but many times in Germany, my first-class 
ticket found me no accommodation, and often in 
changing from the main line to a branch line not 
even a first-class compartment. Shippers in the 
coal and iron districts, when I was there, com- 
plained bitterly that there were not enough freight- 
cars, that their complaints were smothered in bu- 
reaucratic portfolios, and that private enterprise 
in the shape of proposals to build new lines was 
disregarded. The tyranny of Prussia extends even 
into the railway field. The Oderberg-Wien line 
was built to avoid using the Saxon state railway 
lines, was a spite railway in fact. Here again there 
was no redress, no one to appeal to against the 
autocrat. 

In a debate in the Reichstag, in January, 1913, 
there was much complaint that the Prussian gov- 

422 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 

ernment was conducting the railways with the least 
possible outlay, thus saving money for the state, 
but hampering the industrial interests of the coun- 
try. It was stated that there were not enough en- 
gines or freight-cars, there was an inadequate staff, 
and that as a consequence, the loss to the coal in- 
dustry had been $11,500,000 and to the coal-miners 

$3>375>°°°- 

On the state-owned railways of the west of 

France the break-down is ludicrously complete, and 

the people are staggered by the official estimates 

that it will require at least $100,000,000 to put them 

in decent running order. 

In twenty years the American railways have prac- 
tically been rebuilt, with heavier rails, better bridges, 
more permanent stations, and so on; while twenty 
years ago it cost a passenger 2.165 cents to travel 
a mile, to-day it costs him 1.9 16 cents. We need 
a lot of bustling about abroad before we realize how 
much we have to be grateful for at home ! 

Probably the most costly and the most trouble- 
some of Germany's problems is her conquered 
provinces : Hanover, Schleswig-Holstein, Alsace- 
Lorraine, and Poland. Hanover, which was taken 
by Prussia and her king deposed, is nowadays a 
minor matter of the relations between courts, in- 
dividuals, and families, which may be said to be 
settled by the arranged marriage between the 
Kaiser's charming daughter and the heir to the 
Duke of Cumberland, whose ancestors were kings 
of Hanover. 

The Danes, on the other hand, in the northern 

423 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

part of these provinces, still resist Prussianization. 
They keep to themselves and their language, send 
their children to school in Denmark, and resist all 
attempts at social and racial incorporation. They 
are troublesome, as an independent and surly 
daughter-in-law might be troublesome. Alsace- 
Lorraine and Posen, on the contrary, are outspoken 
and potentially dangerous foes in Germany's own 
household. 

In 1872 Bismarck said: " Alsace-Lorraine will 
be placed on an equality with the other German 
states, ... so that the people may be induced to 
forget, in a comparatively short time, the trouble 
and distress of the war and of annexation." In 
1912, a loyal Alsatian German writes: " Das Elsass, 
dies jiingstgeborene Kind der deutschen Volker- 
familie, braucht etwas mehr Liebe." Forty years 
of Prussian rule have not fulfilled the promise of 
Bismarck. This same Alsatian writer continues: 
"In short, we are approaching ever nearer to the 
condition of the citizens of all the other German 
States, as Baden, Saxony, Bavaria, where they are 
also not always of one mind with the higher ruling 
powers." 

It is difficult for the American, who, no matter 
what particular state he lives in, is first of all a citi- 
zen of the United States, to understand this jeal- 
ousy and, in some quarters, bitter dislike of Prus- 
sia. If the State of New York had sixty million 
of our ninety million population, and if the gov- 
ernor of New York were also perpetual President 
of the United States, commanded the army and 

424 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 

navy, controlled the foreign policy, and appointed 
the cabinet ministers, who were responsible to him 
alone, we could get an approximate idea of how 
the people of Virginia, Massachusetts, Illinois, and 
California would feel toward New York. This is 
a rough-drawn comparison with the situation in 
Germany. If, in addition, we had the Philippine 
Islands where Maine is, and Cuba where Texas is,, 
it is easy to recognize the consequent complica- 
tions. 

We should remember this picture in dealing with 
this German problem, which, at any rate, from the 
point of view of kindly feeling and successful adop- 
tion of these foreign peoples into the German 
family, has been a dire failure. The miserable 
failure of the Germans in Southwest Africa, their 
inconclusive war with the Herreros, and the abso- 
lute break-down of Prussian methods with the na- 
tives, is scarcely more typical than the failure in 
Alsace-Lorraine and Poland. The Prussian belief 
in sand-paper as an emollient must be by now 
rudely shaken. 

At last a constitution has been given the two 
conquered provinces. The governor is to be ad- 
vised by a parliament, but the government is not 
responsible to the parliament, which is composed of 
two houses. The upper house has thirty-six mem- 
bers, eighteen of whom are nominees of the Em- 
peror and eighteen from the churches, universities, 
and principal cities. The lower house is to be 
elected by popular franchise. Three years' resi- 
dence in the same place entitles a man to a vote, 

42.5 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

but every voter over thirty-five years of age has two 
votes, and every voter over forty-five has three 
votes. 

This, as an American can appreciate, has not 
been received with enthusiasm, and their conduct 
has been so provoking that the Emperor, during 
a recent visit, scolded the people, in an interview 
with the mayor of a certain town, and, what caused 
great amusement among the enemies of Prussia, 
threatened to incorporate them into Prussia, as had 
been done with Hanover, if they were not better 
behaved. This; of course, was seized upon as an 
admission that to be taken into the Prussian family 
was of all the hardships the most dreadful. The 
socialist journal Vorwarts spoke of Prussia as 
" that brutal country which thus openly confesses 
its dishonor to all the world. " Herr Scheidemann 
asked in the Reichstag, if Prussia then acknowl- 
edged herself to be a sort of house of correction, 
and " has Prussia, then, become the German Si- 
beria ?" In 191 1 the Reichstag gave the provinces 
three votes in the Federal Council. 

Metz, it is said, is more French than ever, and 
thousands troop across the boundaries on the an- 
niversary of the French national holiday, to cele- 
brate it on French soil. The conquered provinces 
are kept in order, but the French language, French 
customs, French culture, are still to the fore, and 
so far as loyalty, affection, or a change of mind and 
heart is concerned the conversion is still incomplete. 
The inhabitants have been baptized Germans, but 

426 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 

very few of them have taken voluntarily, their first 
communion of nationalization. 

" On changerait plutot le coeur de place, 
Que de changer la vieille Alsace." 

The German, Karl Lamprecht, in his valuable 
history of contemporary Germany, is more hopeful 
of the situation than are other writers and ob- 
servers. Professor Werner Wittich maintains that 
the best of the intellectual side of life in Alsace is 
impregnated with French culture and traditions; 
and even German officers long stationed in the two 
conquered provinces admit the stubborn allegiance 
of the people to French customs, habits, beliefs, and 
traditions. But however that may be, and it is ad- 
mittedly a question that different prejudices and 
hopes will answer differently, there is no denial on 
the part of any one, high or low, that the Prussian 
bureaucratic mandarins have made no progress in 
winning the affection or the voluntary loyalty of the 
people. The Prussian has had recourse to the ad- 
vice given by Prince Biilow, " if you cannot be 
loved, then you must be feared." A friend who is 
only a friend, an ally who is only an ally, a ser- 
vant who only serves you because he is afraid of 
you, is not only an uncomfortable but a dangerous 
factor in any establishment, whether domestic or 
national. Corporalism, begun by Frederick the 
Great and fastened upon Germany by Bismarck, has 
had its successes. I recognized them, indeed, on 
returning to Germany after twenty-five years, as 
astounding successes, but they have their weak 

427 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

side too. A barracks can never be the ideal of 
a home, nor a corporal the ideal of a guide, phi- 
losopher, and friend. Their own philosopher 
Nietzsche writes : " the state is the coldest of all cold 
monsters." 

Joseph de Maistre, writing of the Slav tem- 
perament, says : " Si on enterrait im desir Slave 
sous une forteresse, il la ferait sauter." Germany 
has some reason to believe that this is true. 

In the northeast of Germany live some 3,000,000 
Poles under Prussian supervision and laws, and ruled 
by a Prussian governor. There are some 7,000,000 
or 8,000,000 Poles divided between Russia, Aus- 
tria-Hungary, and Prussia, and behind these are 
165,000,000 Russians. The boundary between this 
mass and Germany is one of sand; and the railway 
journey from Posen to Berlin, is a matter of only 
four hours. If we were in Germany's shoes, we 
should probably take some pains to be well guarded 
in that quarter. We should, however, do it in quite 
another fashion. We should, if possible, turn over 
the inhabitants to their own governing, as En- 
gland has done in South Africa, as we have tried 
to do in Cuba, and as we would do gladly in the 
Philippines, if every intelligent man who knows 
the situation there, were not assured that robbery, 
murder, and license would follow on the heels of 
our departure; and that instead of doing a mag- 
nanimous thing we should be shirking our respon- 
sibilities in the most cowardly fashion. It is bad 
enough to know, that we have such cynical politi- 
cal sophists in Congress, that they would even suf- 

428 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 

fer that catastrophe to innocent people in the Philip- 
pines, if they thought it would make them votes at 
home. 

Prussia does not recognize such methods of rul- 
ing. Corporatism is their only way, and, where the 
people are fit to govern themselves, a very bad 
and humiliating way, for the Eden of the bureau- 
crat is the hell of the governed. If the Germans 
approve it for themselves, it is not our business to 
comment; but where these methods are applied to 
foreign peoples, we both anticipate and applaud their 
failure. 

The insurrections in Russian and Austrian Po- 
land, had their echoes in Posen, and since 1849 
Prussia has tried in every way to substitute Ger- 
mans for Poles, in the country, and to make the 
German language predominant in the churches, 
schools, and in the administration. The Poles have 
resisted, emphasizing their resistance in 1867, when 
they were included in the North German Federa- 
tion, and again in 1871, when they were included 
in the new German Empire. 

The Emperor William I, in 1886, said: " The 
increasing predominance of the Polish over the 
German element in certain provinces of the east 
makes it a duty of the government to guarantee 
the existence and the development of the German 
population. ,, Since 1871 the Poles have increased 
so much faster than the Germans that there is dan- 
ger of complete extermination of the German pop- 
ulation. In 1902 the grandson of William I, the 
present Emperor, said at Marienburg : " Polish ar- 

429 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

rogance is unbearable, and I am obliged to appeal 
to my people to defend themselves against it, for 
the preservation of their national well-being. It is 
a question of the defence of the civilization and 
the culture of Germany. To-day and to-morrow, as 
in the past, we must fight against the common 
enemy." This speech of the Emperor was made 
at Marienburg, a fine old town, once very prosper- 
ous, and in the days of the Wars of the Roses play- 
ing a conspicuous part with the other Hanseatic 
towns. This town was also the head and seat of the 
Teutonic Order, and it was this Teutonic Order 
which, in 1230, began the work of converting the 
then heathen Prussians, along lines not unlike those 
of the Prussian Ansiedlungskommission of to-day. 

Prussia has attempted to solve this question by 
establishing a government in the province, pledged 
to the introduction of the German language, and so 
far as possible of German manners and customs. 
This has been met with fierce opposition, and never 
have I heard in the colonies of other countries, ex- 
cept in Korea, under the present Japanese adminis- 
tration, such fanatical hatred, expressed in words, 
as I have heard in Posen. If you dislike Prussia, 
do not attempt to revile her yourself; rather go to 
Posen and hear it done in a far more satisfying 
way. 

The religious question enters largely into the 
•matter, and the ignorant Poles are even taught that 
the Virgin Mary, or the " Polish Queen," will not 
understand their intercessions if they are not made 
in the Polish language. In 1870 there was one 

430 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 

Polish newspaper in Germany, to-day there are 

138. 

From 1886 to 1910 the Ansiedlungskommission 
or committee of colonization, have spent $170,896,- 
325, and have received $51,863,175, leaving a net 
expenditure of $119,033,150. This large expendi- 
ture has resulted in the settlement upon the land 
of 18,507 families, or about 111,000 persons. The 
total number settled is now 131,000 persons. Each 
male adult German settler has cost the state some- 
thing over $32,000 ! This is probably the most ex- 
travagant colonization scheme ever attempted in 
the world. 

But even this expenditure has not brought suc- 
cess, and for a very interesting reason. Again the 
Germans have been remarkably successful in their 
dealings with the inanimate, but the Arcana imperii 
are still hidden from them. They have redeemed 
the land, taught the Poles, as well as the German set- 
tlers, how to farm successfully; largely increased 
the output of grain, fruit, pigs, calves, chickens, 
geese, and eggs, for which Germany spends several 
hundred millions a year abroad ; and seen to it that 
the breed of cows, pigs, horses, chickens, and geese 
is kept at a high standard. But now the Poles will 
sell no more land. They have profited, not been 
ruined, by what has come out of the belly of the 
Trojan horse! The commission is at a standstill, 
and it is now proposed to enforce the Prussian law 
of 1908 for the expropriation of Polish estates. 
This law was overwhelmingly defeated in the 
Reichstag in February, 191 3, but the Chancellor 

431 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

von Bethmann-Hollweg declared that it was an 
affair of Prussia, with which the Reichstag has 
nothing to do, and the sand-paper of the Prussian 
bureaucracy will probably be rubbed upon the Po- 
lish wound anew. 

This attempt to build a line of moral and intel- 
lectual forts, supplemented by German settlers, on 
the land between Russia and Prussia, and to stop 
the inrush of the Slavic population, has ample excuse 
behind it. It is undoubtedly in case of war a seri- 
ous danger to Germany to leave herself unguarded 
there. As to what will come of the social and racial 
questions, prophecy alone can answer, and I have 
far too much imagination to venture upon proph- 
ecy. The care and thoroughness with which the 
work is done is beyond all praise, but it is as diffi- 
cult to make your brother love you by taking thought 
thereon, as it is to add a cubit to one's stature by 
the same method. 

Professor Ludwig Bernhard, while regretting 
that this attempt at Germanization has not suc- 
ceeded, admits that Prussian methods are hopeless 
in such matters. They have, on the contrary, 
awakened national feeling, encouraged the forming 
of agricultural societies, and strengthened the Bank 
of Posen, which has become the financial citadel 
of opposition. Professor Bernhard goes so far as 
to say that he doubts if even the putting into force 
of the expropriation law of 1908 will bring about 
any better results. To an American this lack of 
unity seems to be perhaps of exaggerated impor- 
tance. Wir brauchen nicht diese Nordlichter (We 

43 2 



GERMAN PROBLEMS 

do not need these northern luminaries), is a phrase 
of a certain Bavarian official, and in lower or louder 
tones one hears the phrase all over Germany out- 
side of Prussia, and loudest of all in these con- 
quered provinces. 

To legislate men into mechanical relations with 
one another may keep the peace temporarily, but it 
is not a final solution of the intricate problem of 
living together in our huddled civilization. The 
day has gone by when we could rule men without 
gaining at least their respect, and if possible their 
affection. Prussia's stiffness and newness as a gov- 
erning power ; her lack of a high moral or religious 
tone, for there is a rapidly increasing tendency there 
to agree with the writer during the French Revolu- 
tion: la question de dieu manque d'actualite; her 
hard and inflexible methods, make her a churlish 
neighbor and an arrogant master. In forty years 
Prussia has accomplished great things despite these 
disadvantages of temperament, of tradition, and 
despite these external dangers and problems. She 
is learning now that there are not only individuals 
but whole peoples who say, as William the Con- 
querer said to the Pope : " Never have I taken an 
oath of fealty, nor shall I ever do so." 



433 



X 

"FROM ENVY, HATRED, AND MALICE " 

IT has always been considered sound doctrine 
among Chiistians that they should love one 
another. Vigorous exponents of the doctrine, 
however, have ever been few in numbers. As the 
world gets more crowded, and we find it more and 
more difficult to make room for ourselves, and to 
get a living, we find antagonisms and defensive 
tactics, occupying so much of our time and energy 
that loving one another is almost lost sight of. It 
has been found necessary even among those of the 
same nation to legislate for love. We call such laws, 
with dull contempt for irony, social legislation. In 
Germany, and now in England, the modern sacra- 
ment of loving one another consists in licking 
stamps ; these stamps are then stuck on cards, which 
bind the brethren together in mutual and adhesive 
helpfulness. 

With nations the problem is not so easily and 
superficially solved; because no one body of legis- 
lators and police has jurisdiction over all the parties 
concerned. As a result of this just now in Europe, 
wisdom is not the arbiter; on the contrary, preju- 
dices, passions, indiscretions, and follies on the part 
of all the antagonists preserve a certain dangerous 
epuipoise. 

434 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 

After you have seen something and heard a great 
deal of these antagonisms between nations; read 
their newspapers; talked with the protagonists and 
with their rulers, and with the responsible servants 
of the State; discussed with professors and legis- 
lators these questions; and listened to the warriors 
on both sides, you are somewhat bewildered. There 
are so many reasons why this one should distrust 
that one, so many rather unnatural alliances for 
protection against one another, so much friendship 
of the sort expressed by the phrase, " on aime tou- 
jours quelqu'un contre quelqu'un," so much suspi- 
cious watching the movements of one another, that 
one is reminded of the jingle of one's youth: 

" There's a cat in the garden laying for a rat, 
There's a boy with a catapult a-laying for the cat, 
The cat's name is Susan, the boy's name is Jim, 
And his father round the corner is a-laying for him." 

Even to the youngest of us, and to the most inex- 
perienced, this betokens a strained situation. The 
first and most natural result is that each nation's 
" watchmen who sit above in an high tower/' 
whether they be the professionals selected by the 
people or merely amateur patriots, are forever cry- 
ing out for greater armaments. 

At the time of the Boxer troubles in China, when 
Germany sent some ships to demand reparation for 
the murder of her ambassador in Peking, she had 
only two ships left at home to guard her own shores. 
When all England was exasperated by the Boer 
telegram sent by the Kaiser, or, if the truth is to 

435 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

be told, by his advisers, the late Baron Marschal 
von Bieberstein and Prince Hohenlohe, to Presi- 
dent Kriiger, official Germany lamented publicly 
that she lacked a powerful navy. Only a week after 
the Boers declared war the Kaiser is reported to 
have said : " Bitter is our need of a strong navy." 
Germany has noticed, too, not without suspicion, 
that — 

In 1904 England had 202,000 tons of war-ships 
in the Mediterranean and none in the North Sea. 

In 1907 England had 135,000 tons of war-ships 
in the Mediterranean and 166,000 tons in the North 
Sea. 

In 1909 England had 123,000 tons of war-ships 
in the Mediterranean and 427,000 tons in the North 
Sea. 

In 19 12 England had 126,000 tons of war-ships 
in the Mediterranean and 481,000 tons in the North 
Sea. 

At last accounts England had 50,000 tons of war- 
ships in the Mediterranean and 500,000 tons in the 
North Sea. 

There has been a steady increase of the navy in 
Germany. In 1900 the tonnage of war-ships and 
large cruisers over 5,000 tons was 152,000; in 191 1 
it was 823,000. The number of heavy guns in 1900 
was 52; in 191 1 it was 330. The horse-power of 
engines in 1900 was 160,000; in 191 1 it was 1,051,- 
000. The naval crews in 1900 numbered 28,326; in 
191 1, 57,353; and in 1913 the German naval per- 
sonnel will consist of 3,394 officers and 69,495 men. 
Between 1900 and 191 1 the tonnage of the British 

436 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE " 

fleet increased from 215,000 to 1,716,000; of the 
German fleet from 152,000 to 829,000. 

In ten years British naval expenditure has in- 
creased from $172,500,000 to $222,500,000; in Ger- 
many the expenditure has jumped from $47,500,000 
to $110,000,000; in America the increase is from 
$80,000,000 to $132,500,000. Out of these total 
sums Great Britain spends one third, America one 
fifth, and Germany one half on new construction. 

Germany has a navy league numbering over one 
million active and honorary members ; a periodical, 
Die Flotte, published by the league with a circula- 
tion of over 400,000. This league not only educates 
but excites the whole nation by a vigorous campaign 
which never ceases. It takes its members on ex- 
cursions to seaports to see the ships; it holds ex- 
hibitions throughout the country with pictures and 
lecturers; it supports seamen's homes, and helps to 
equip boys wishing to enter the navy; it lends its 
encouragement to the two school-ships which are 
partly supported from public funds; it sees to it 
that war-ships are named after provinces and cities, 
creating a friendly rivalry among them ; and lately, 
out of its surplus funds, it has presented a gun-boat 
to the nation. 

The leading spirit of this organization is Admiral 
von Tirpitz, at present the German secretary of the 
navy and probably the most dangerous mischief- 
maker in Europe. In addition to this work a cam- 
paign is waged in the press for the increase of the 
navy, in which a number of experts are engaged. I 
have been told by Germans who ought to know, but 

437 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

who deprecate this exciting campaigning, that the 
press is so largely influenced by Admiral von Tirpitz 
and his corps of press-agents and writers, that it is 
even difficult to procure the publication of a protest 
or a reply. Indeed, were it my habit to go into per- 
sonal matters, I could offer ample proof of this con- 
tention, that the opponents of naval expansion are 
cleverly shut out of the press altogether. 

Wilhelmshafen, the naval station on the North 
Sea, has been fortified till it is said to be impreg- 
nable; the same has been done for Heligoland, and 
the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser have also been 
strongly fortified. At Kiel are the naval technical 
school, an arsenal, and dry and floating docks, and 
the canal itself is being widened and deepened to 
meet the needs of the largest ships of war. 

When it is remembered that the beginnings of 
all this date back only to 1898, when the first navy 
bill was passed through the Reichstag with much 
difficulty, and only after the Emperor and his minis- 
ters had brought every influence to bear upon the 
members, Germany is certainly to be congratulated 
upon her success. Nor is she to be blamed for re- 
membering, and regretting, that the two most im- 
portant harbors used by her trade are Antwerp and 
Rotterdam, the one in Belgium, the other in Hol- 
land. 

The Kielerwoche, or Kiel Regatta, has grown 
from the sailing-matches of a few small yachts into 
one of the best-managed, most picturesque, and 
gayest yachting weeks in the world. Indeed, from 
the stand-point of hospitality, orderliness, imposing 

438 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE " 

array of shipping, and good racing and friendliness 
to the stranger, I am not sure that it is equalled at 
either Newport or Cowes. Were I writing merely 
from my personal experience, I should declare un- 
hesitatingly that it is the most splendid and best- 
managed picnic on the water that one can attend, 
and lovers of yachts and yachting should not fail to 
see it. This Kielerwoche, too, has, and is intended 
to have, an influence in teaching the Germans to aid 
and abet their Emperor and his ministers in making 
Germany a great sea power. 

When a nation for more than a hundred years 
has been quite comfortably safe from any fear of 
attack because she has been easily first in commerce, 
wealth, industry, and in sea power, it comes as a 
shock, even to a phlegmatic people, to learn that 
they are being rapidly overhauled commercially, 
financially, industrially, and as a fighting force on 
the sea; and all this within a few years. 

England with her money subsides, with her 
troops, and with her navy has heretofore provided 
against Continental aggression by the diplomatic 
philosophy of a balance of power. She has ar- 
ranged her alliances with Continental powers so that 
no one of them could become a menace to herself. 
She did so against the Spain of Charles V, the 
France of Louis XIV, the France of Napoleon, the 
Russia of the late Czar, and now against the Ger- 
many of William II. The France of the great 
Napoleon, in attempting to complete the commer- 
cial isolation of England by compelling Russia to 
close her ports to her, buried herself in snow and 

439 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

ice on the way back from Moscow, and delivered 
herself up completely a little later at Waterloo. 
That was the nearest to success of any attempt to 
break through the doctrine of the balance of power. 

In the year 800 A. D. the Catholic Church, 
which took over the Roman supremacy to translate 
it into a spiritual empire, accepted a German Em- 
peror, Charlemagne, as her man-at-arms. One 
hundred and fifty years later she accepted still an- 
other, Otto I. This partnership was called the 
Holy Roman Empire. It has been noted, but is still 
misunderstood, that the difference between the 
Catholic Church before and after the Reformation 
was very marked. The Catholic Church claimed 
to be not only a system of belief but a system of 
government. Infallibility was to include secular 
as well as religious matters, and the church strove 
to rule as a secular emperor and as a spiritual tyrant. 
To-day Roman Catholicism is a sect, one among 
many; Roman Catholics themselves would be the 
last to consent to any temporal universal power. 

The Protestants, too, were at first inclined to the 
methods of Rome. Luther teaches intolerance, and 
Calvin burns a heretic and writes in favor of the 
doctrine : Jure gladii coercendos esse hereticos. The 
real reformation only came when we had reformed 
the reformers, but it was that spiritual and political 
legacy from Rome that the Teuton world, includ- 
ing ourselves, fought to nullify. 

There was no successful revolt against this 
curious spiritual Caesarism until the son of a Saxon 
miner named Luther married out of monkdom, 

440 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 

burnt the Pope's commands on a bonfire, and 
plunged all Europe first into a peasants' war, fol- 
lowed by a dividing of Europe between a Protestant 
union and a Catholic league, and then a thirty 
years' war, which destroyed two thirds of the popu- 
lation of what is now Germany. After three 
hundred years of disunion and hatreds, Prussia 
united their country by a cement of blood and iron, 
and in the last forty years has made out of her the 
most powerful nation on the continent of Europe. 

It is only very lately that any of us have realized 
what has happened. So little attention has been 
paid to the matter that there is no sufficient and 
worthy history of Germany in English. More than 
we realize, Germany is a new factor in politics, a 
new rival in commerce, a new knight in the tourna- 
ment lists. This accounts, in no small degree, for 
the uneasiness Germany causes in the world. 

Forty years ago Germany was known to a few 
students as having supplied us with music, mythol- 
ogy, and a certain amount of enchanting litera- 
ture; scholarship along certain lines; and work in 
philosophy that a few in America and in England 
were studying. As a knight in shining armor, de- 
manding a place at the council-board of nations, and 
ready to resent any passing over of her claims to 
recognition in the discussion and settlement of in- 
ternational politics, she is a new-comer. 

One of the chief causes for the restlessness, par- 
ticularly in England, the heart of the greatest em- 
pire in the world, is that this new-comer must be 
made room for at the table, received with courtesy, 

441 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

and consulted. Another individual has married into 
the family, and must gradually find her place there. 
Of all nations in the world, England is the slowest 
to make new friends and acquaintances, and easily 
the most awkward in doing so. She is a good 
friend when you know her, but with the most abom- 
inable manners to strangers. 

The Englishman, for example, pops into his club 
to escape the world, not to seek it there. The 
English club and the English home are primarily 
for seclusion, not for companionship, and this char- 
acteristic alone is wo fully hard for the stranger to 
understand. To the gregarious German, priding 
himself upon Gemiithlichkeit, loving reunions, res- 
taurants, his Stammtischy formal and punctilious 
in his politeness, unused to the ways of the world, 
but yet convinced that he is now a great man politi- 
cally and commercially, the Englishman is not only 
an enigma but an insult. I am criticising neither. I 
have received unbounded hospitality and friendli- 
ness from both. I have ridden, fought, drunk, trav- 
elled, and lived with both, but for that very reason 
I understand how horribly and continually they rub 
one another the wrong way. 

In the fundamental matter of morals the Ger- 
man looks upon the Englishman as a hypocrite, and 
the Englishman looks upon the German as rather 
unpolished and undignified. Berlin is open all night, 
London closes at half-past twelve. The British 
Sunday is a gloomy suppression of vitality, touched 
up here and there with preaching and hymn-sing- 
ing, and fringed with surreptitious golf; the Ger- 

442 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 

man Sunday is a national fair, with a blossoming 
of all kinds of amusements, deluged with beer, and 
attended by whole families as their only relaxation 
during the week. 

The German licenses vice, lotteries, and gam- 
bling; the Englishman refuses to recognize the 
existence of any of the three. The German does 
not understand the Englishman's point of view in 
these matters, which is that, though he knows these 
things to exist, and that he is no better in actual 
practice than other men, he refuses to accept these 
as his ideal. He denounces and passes judgment 
upon, and punishes men and women, who go too far 
in their appreciation and practice of apolausticism 
as a philosophy of life. He might have run away 
from danger himself, but he none the less scorns 
the man who did so. The shipwreck, the fire, the 
test of moral courage and endurance, may have 
found him a coward, or weak, or a deserter, but he 
holds that he must none the less measure the 
coward, the weakling, and the deserter, not by his 
own possible weakness if put to the same tests, but 
by his ideal of a courageous and straightforward 
Englishman. I agree with him wholly and heartily. 
If our sympathy is to go out on every occasion, to 
the man who failed to come up to the mark of noble 
manhood, just because we feel that we might under 
like circumstances have failed too, then we give up 
the code of honor altogether, and our ideals droop 
to the level from which we fight and pray to be pre- 
served. 

We pass judgment upon the coward, upon the 

443 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

failure, upon the man who has not mastered his 
life and life itself, unhesitatingly. It is hard to 
do, it looks as though one were without pity and 
without sympathy. Not so; it is because we have 
great sympathy, and I hope unending pity, and 
a growing charity, and constant willingness to lend 
a hand; but to condone failure is to commit the 
selfish and unpardonable cowardice of not judging 
another that you may not be forced to judge your- 
self too harshly. That is far from being hypocrisy. 
Indeed, in these days it is one of the hardest things 
to do, so fast are we levelling down socially and 
politically and even morally. It looks like an as- 
sumption of superiority when, God knows, it is only 
a timorous attempt on our part not to lose our grip 
on the ideals that help to keep us out of the dust 
and the mud. But he who lets others off lightly in 
order that he may not be thought to have too high a 
standard himself, or because he fears that he may 
one day fail himself, such a one is the coward of 
cowards, the candidate for the lowest place in hell ; 
and well he deserves it, for he helps to lower the 
standard of manhood, and he tarnishes the shield 
of honor of the whole race. Let them call us hyp- 
ocrites till they strangle doing so, for when we 
lower our standards because we fear that we can- 
not live up to them ourselves, all will be lost. To 
be mild with other men, because we distrust our- 
selves, is a poisonous sympathy that rots away the 
life of him who receives it, and of him who gives 
it, and ends in a slobbering charity which must 
finally protect itself by tyranny and cruelty. Not 

444 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE " 

infrequently in dealing with individuals and with 
subject nations it is senseless cruelty to be over- 
kind. 

This sneer of Saxon hypocrisy, of " Perfide 
Albion," is seldom explained to other people by men 
of our race, and we Americans and Englishmen 
have taken little pains to make it clear. We should 
not be surprised, therefore, if we are misunderstood. 
We have been easily first so long that we have 
neglected the explanation or the defence of our- 
selves to others. 

The Germans, too, have something of the same 
indifference. A most sympathetic observer of Ger- 
man manners and customs, and a man for whose 
honesty and gentleness I have the highest esteem, 
Pere Didon, remarked of the Germans: "J'ai 
essaye maintes fois de decouvrir chez TAllemand 
une sympathie quelconque pour d'autres nations ; je 
n'y ai pas reussi." 

I call attention again to the important point, that 
it has been difficult to manufacture an all-round 
German patriotism. As a consequence patriotism 
in Germany is more than a sentiment, it is a theory, 
a doctrine, a theme to which statesmen, philosophers 
and poets, and rulers devote their energies. The 
German looks upon his nation not only as a people, 
but as a race, almost as a formal religion; hence 
perhaps his hatred of the Jew and the Slav, and 
his difficulties with all foreign peoples within his 
borders. In order to build up his patriotism the 
German has been taught systematically to dislike 
first the Austrians, then the French, now the 

445 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

English; and let not the American suppose that he 
likes him any better, for he does not. This patriot- 
ism, once developed, was drawn on for funds for an 
army, then for a navy. At the present time there 
must be some explanation offered, and the explana- 
tion is fear of England, dislike of British arrogance. 
In one of his latest speeches the Kaiser said: " We 
need this fleet to protect ourselves from arrogance "; 
that, of course, means, always means, British arro- 
gance. 

From the moment a child goes to school, by pic- 
tures on the walls, by an indirect teaching of his- 
tory and geography, he is led on discreetly to find 
England in Germany's way. At the present writing 
German school children, and German students, and 
German recruits are imbued with the idea that Ger- 
many's relations with England are in some sort an 
armistice. This poisonous teaching of patriotism 
has produced wide-spread enmity of feeling among 
the innocent, but this enmity has built the navy. 
And now that in certain quarters it is found de- 
sirable to soothe and calm this feeling, it proves to 
be more difficult to subdue than it was to arouse. 
The monster that Frankenstein called up devours 
its own creator. Now that England can no longer 
be the enemy, because Germany's greatest present 
and future danger is from the Slav races, there are 
evidences that the German state is teaching the dog 
not to bark at England any more. 

Germany has not neglected England, but of late 
she has paid her the wrong kind of attention. 
Erasmus, the scholar-rapier, as Luther was the 

446 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE 5 ' 

hammer, of the Reformation, visits England ami 
writes : " Above all, speak no evil of England to 
them. They are proud of their country above all 
nations in the world, as they have good reason to 
be." 

Kant, the German philosopher, on his clocklike 
rounds in Konigsberg, knew something of En- 
gland and writes of her : " Die englische Nation, 
als Volk betrachtet, ist das schatzbarste Ganze von 
Menschen im Verhaltniss unter einander; aber als 
Staat gegen fremde Staaten der verderblichste, 
gewaltsamste, herrschsuchtigste und kriegerregend- 
ste von alien/' 

(" The English, as a people, in their relations to 
one another are a most estimable body of men, but 
as a nation in their relations with other nations they 
are of all people the most pernicious, the most vio- 
lent, the most domineering, and the most strife- 
provoking.") 

Another German, something of a scholar, some- 
thing of a philosopher, but a wit and a singer, Heine, 
visited England, and, as he handed a fee to the 
verger who had shown him around Westminster 
Abbey, said : " I would willingly give you twice as 
much if the collection were complete !" To him 
Napoleon defeated was a greater man than the 
" starched, stiff" Wellington; and the " potatoes 
boiled in water and put on the table as God made 
them " and the " country with three hundred re- 
ligions and only one sauce " were a constant source 
of amused annoyance. The German professors and 
students, who in the early part of the nineteenth 

447 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

century lauded English constitutional liberty to the 
skies and made a god of Burke, have soured to- 
ward England since. 

"What does Germany want?" asked Thiers of 
the German historian Ranke. " To destroy the 
work of Louis XIV," was the reply. Professor 
Treitschke and his successor in the chair of his- 
tory at Berlin, Professor Delbriick, have been out- 
spoken in their denunciation of England. Momm- 
sen, Schmoller, Schiemann, Zorn of Bonn, and his 
colleague there, von Dirksen, Professor Dietrich 
Schaefer, Professor Adolph Wagner, and many 
other scholars have been, and are, politicians in 
Germany, and none of them friendly to England, to 
France, or to America. Bismarck himself remarked 
of these gentlemen : " Die Politik ist keine Wissens- 
chaft, wie viele der Herren Professoren sich ein- 
bilden, sie ist eben eine Kunst " (" Politics is not a 
science as many professorial gentlemen fancy; it 
is an art"); and again: " Die Arbeit des Diplo- 
mat en, seine Aufgabe, besteht in dem praktischen 
Verkehr mit Menschen, in der richtigen Beurtheil- 
ung von dem, was andere Leute unter gewissen 
Umstanden Wahrscheinlich thun werden, in der 
richtigen Erkennung der Absichten anderer; in der 
richtigen Darstellung der seinigen " (" The work of 
the diplomat, his chief task, indeed, consists in the 
practical dealing with men, in his sound judgment of 
what other people would probably do under certain 
circumstances, in his correct interpretation of the 
intentions and purposes of other people, and in the 
accurate presentation of his own"). 

448 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 

He began his political life in 1862 with the 
phrase : " Die grossen Fragen konnen durch Reden 
und Majoritatsbeschliisse nicht entschieden werden, 
sondern durch Eisen und Blut " (" The great ques- 
tions cannot be decided by speeches and the decisions 
of majorities, but by iron and blood "). 

It is a well-known professor who writes : " Denn 
die einzige Gefahr, die den Frieden in Europa und 
damit den Welt frieden droht, liegt in den krank- 
haften Ubertreibungen des englischen Imperialis- 
mus " (" The only danger to the peace of Europe, 
and that includes the peace of the world, lies in the 
morbid excesses of British imperialism "). An- 
other quotation from the same pen reads : " So far 
as other perils to the British Empire are concerned, 
they are of much the same character, but the empire 
suffers too from the selfish policy of English busi- 
ness, which, in order to create big business, does 
not hesitate to interfere with the declared policy 
of the state." Then follows the statement that 
English traders have smuggled guns to the Persian 
Gulf. 

Professor Zorn writes : " The possibility that 
while our Emperor was seeking rest and refresh- 
ment in Norwegian waters and enjoying the beauties 
of the Norwegian landscape, English ships were 
lying in readiness to annihilate German ships." 
It is hard to believe that such lunatic lies can come 
from the pen of a professor in good standing. 

" Ohne zu iibertreiben kann man sagen dass 
heute nur der allerkleinste Teil der deutschen 
Presse geneigt ist, den Englandern Gerechtigkeit 

449 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

widerfahren zu lassen, bei Behandlung allgemeiner 
Fragen sich auch einmal auf den englischen Stand- 
punkt der Betrachtung wenigstens zeitweise zu 
versetzen. England ist furviele ' der ' Feind an 
sich, und ein Feind dem man keine Riicksichten 
schuldet." 

(" It is no exaggeration to say that nowadays 
only the tiniest minority of the German press is in- 
clined to do justice to the English by at least oc- 
casionally looking at questions from the British 
point of view. England is for many the enemy of 
enemies and an enemy to whom no consideration is 
due.") Thus writes one of the cooler heads in the 
Kolnische Zcitung. 

Doctor Herbert von Dirksen, of Bonn, writing 
of the Monroe Doctrine, says : " By what right does 
America attempt to check the strongest expansion 
policy of all other nations of the earth?" Dur- 
ing the Boer war Germany was showered with 
post-cards and caricatures of the English. British 
soldiers with donkey heads marched past Queen 
Victoria and the Prince of Wales; the venerable 
Queen Victoria is pictured plucking the tail feathers 
from an ostrich which she holds across her knees ; 
the three generals, Methuen, Buller, and Gatacre, 
take off their faces to discover the heads of an ass, 
a sheep, and a cow ; Chamberlain is depicted as the 
instigator of the war, with his pockets and hands 
full of African shares; a parade of the stock-ex- 
change volunteers depicts them as all Jews, with the 
Prince of Wales as a Jew reviewing them; the 
Prince of Wales is pictured surrounded by vulgar 

450 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 

women, who ask, " Say, Fatty, you are not going to 
South Africa? " to which the Prince replies, " No, 
I must stay here to take care of the widows and 
orphans ! " English soldiers are depicted in the act 
of hitting and kicking women and children. 

In the war with Denmark in 1864 the Austrian 
navy met with a disaster at sea. A German publicist 
even then wrote : " I was grieved at the demonstra- 
tions of joy about this in the English Parliament. 
It was not sympathy with the Danes but petty spite 
and malice at the defeat of a foreign fleet. But at 
the same time it is a consolatory proof that the 
English are afraid of the future German navy." 
This quotation is interesting as showing how far 
back the quarrel dates. 

It would be merely a question of how much time 
one cares to devote to scissors and paste to multiply 
these examples of Germany's journalistic and pro- 
fessorial state of mind. It is unfortunate that some 
of this writing in the press is done by those who are 
often in consultation with the Emperor, and on 
some political subjects his advisers. I have sug- 
gested in another chapter that Germany suffers far 
more from the theoretical and book-learned gentle- 
men who surround the Emperor than from his in- 
discretions. In more than one instance his in- 
discretions were due to their blundering. Their 
knowledge of books far surpasses their knowledge 
of men, and nothing can be more dangerous to any 
nation than to be counselled and guided by pedants 
rather than by men of the world. This projecting 
a world from the gaseous elements of one's own 

45i 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

cranium and dealing with that world, instead of the 
world that exists, is a danger to everybody con- 
cerned. 

" Bedauernswert sei es allerdings, dass wir in un- 
serem politischen Leben nicht mit gentlemen zu thun 
haben, dies sei aber ein Begriff der uns uberhaupt 
abgehe," writes Prince Hohenlohe in his memoirs. 
(" It is of all things most to be regretted that in our 
political life we do not have gentlemen to deal with, 
but this is a conception of which we are totally de- 
ficient") 

A daring colonial secretary, speaking in the 
Reichstag of certain scandals in the German col- 
onies, said bluntly : " A reprehensible caste feeling 
has grown up in our colonies, the conception of a 
gentleman being in England different from that in 
Germany." 

When Lord Haldane came to Berlin, on his mis- 
sion to discover if possible a working basis for 
more friendly relations between the two countries, 
his eyes were greeted in the windows of every 
book-shop with books and pamphlets with such titles 
as " Krieg oder Frieden mit England," " Das Per- 
fide Albion," " Deutschland und der Islam," " 1st 
England kriegslustig," " Deutschland sei Wach," 
" England's Weltherrschaft und die deutsche Lux- 
usflotte," " John Bull und wir," and a long list of 
others, all written and advertised to keep alive in 
the German people a sense of their natural antago- 
nism to England. 

During the last year the " Letters of Bergmann " 
brought up again the controversy, that should have 

45 2 



FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE 



n 



been left to die, over the treatment of the Emperor 
Friedrich by an English surgeon. 

In discussing Senator Lodge's resolution before 
the United States Senate, on the Monroe Doctrine, 
the German press spoke of us as " hirnverbrannte 
Yankees/' " bornierte Yankeegehirne " ("crazy 
Yankees/' " provincial Yankee intellects ") ; and the 
words " Dollarika," " Dollarei," and " Dollarman " 
are further malicious expressions of their envy, fre- 
quently used. The Germans are persistently taught 
that there are neither scholars nor students in 
America or in England. One worthy writes : " Die 
Englander lernen nichts. Der Sport lasst ihnen 
keine Zeit dazu. Man ist hinterher auch zu mude." 

I am always very glad, when I happen to be in 
Europe, that I belong to a nation that can afford to 
take these flings with the greatest good-humor. As 
the burly soldier replied when questioned in court 
as to why he allowed his small wife to beat him: 
" It pleases her and it don't hurt I." v 

This struggle for recognition as a great nation,, 
to be received on equal terms by the rest of us, has; 
upset the nerves of certain classes in Germany, and 
among them the untravelled and small-town-dwell- 
ing professor. 

I am a craftsman in letters myself, in a small 
way, but I am no believer that books are the only 
key to life> or the only way to find a solution for its 
riddles and problems. Life is language, and books 
only the dictionaries; men are the text, books only 
the commentaries. Books are only good as a filter 
for actual experiences. A man must have a rich 

453 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

and varied experience of men and women before he 
can use books to advantage. Life is varied, men 
and women many, while the individual life is short; 
wise men read books, therefore, to enrich their ex- 
perience, not merely as the pedant does, to garner 
facts. " J'etudie les livres en attendant que j'etudie 
les hommes," writes Voltaire. " Books are good 
enough in their own way, but they are a mighty 
bloodless substitute for life,^ writes Stevenson. 

Montgolfier sees a woman's skirt drying and 
notices that the hot air fills it and lifts it, and this 
gives him the idea for a balloon. 

Denis Papin sees the cover lifted from a pot by 
the steam, and there follow the myriad inventions 
in which steam is the driving power. 

Newton, dozing under an apple-tree, is hit on the 
head by a falling apple, and there follows the law 
of gravitation. 

Franklin flies a kite, and a shock of electricity 
starts him upon the road to his discoveries. 

Archimedes in his bath notices that his body seems 
to grow lighter, and there follows the great law 
which bears his name. 

These are the foundation-stones upon which the 
whole house of science is built, and no one of them 
was dug out of a book. Charlemagne could not 
read, and Napoleon, when he left school for Paris, 
carried the recommendation from his master that he 
might possibly become a fair officer of marines, but 
nothing more! A capital example of the ability of 
the man of books to measure the abilities of the 
'man of the world. 

454 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 

Reading and writing are modern accomplish- 
ments, and we grossly exaggerate their importance 
as man-makers. That, it has always been my con- 
tention, is the fatal fallacy of modern education, 
and you may see it carried to its extreme in Ger- 
many, for men who have not lived broadly are 
merely hampered by books. It is as though one 
studied a primer with an etymological dictionary at 
his side. Germans are renowned writers of com- 
mentaries, but you cannot deal with men and with 
life by the aid of commentaries. Exegesis solves 
no international quarrels, and the mastery of men is 
not gained with dictionaries and grammars. 

We are all prone to forget the end in the means, 
for the end is far away and the means right under 
our noses. We all recognize, when we are pulled 
up short and made to think, that, after all, the arts 
and letters, religion and philosophy and statecraft, 
are for one ultimate purpose, which is to develop the 
complete man. Everything must be measured by its 
man-making power. Ideas that do not grow men 
are sterile seed. Men who do not move other men 
to action and to growth are not to be excused be- 
cause they stir men to the merely pleasant tickling 
of thinking lazily and feeling softly. Thus Lincoln 
was a greater man than Emerson; Bismarck a 
greater than Lessing; Cromwell a greater than 
Bunyan; Napoleon a greater than Corneille and 
Racine; Pericles greater than Plato; and Caesar 
greater than Virgil. 

The man who only makes maps for the mind is 
only half a man, until his thinking, his influence, 

455 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

his dreams and enthusiasms take on the potency of 
a man and come into action. Even if men of action 
do evil, as some of those I mention have done, they 
lhave translated theories into palpable things that 
permit men to judge whether they be good or bad; 
and the really great artists, thinkers, and saints are 
as fertile as though they were female, and gave 
birth to living things. Their thinking is a form of 
action. The real test of successful organization is 
the thoroughness of the thinking behind it; on the 
other hand, the only test of thinking is the success 
of the thought in actual execution, and the Germans 
often take this too much for granted. We really 
know and hold as an inalienable intellectual posses- 
sion only what we have gained by our own effort, 
and with a certain degree of actual exertion. Peo- 
ple who have never worked out their own salvation 
always join, at last, that large class in the body 
politic who don't know what they want, and who 
will never be happy till they get it. 

When it comes to dealing with inanimate things, 
books of rules are invaluable. Hence, in chemistry, 
physics, archaeology, philology, exegesis, the Ger- 
mans have forged ahead; their intellectual street- 
cleaning is unsurpassed; but the ship ot state needs 
not only men to take observations and to read charts, 
but men to trim the sails to the fitful breezes, the 
blustering winds, the tempests and the changing 
currents of life. They must know, too, the methods, 
the manners, the habits of other men who sail the 
seas of life. It is just here that the German fails; 
he lacks the confidence of experience, and bursts 

456 



" FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE " 

Into bluster and bravado. He is a believer in vicar- 
ious experience, and is as little likely to be saved by 
it, in this world at least, as he is by vicarious sacrifice. 

His imagination does not make allowances for 
either England or America. He does not see, for 
example, that the Monroe Doctrine is not open for 
discussion for the simple reason that America has 
announced it as American policy; just as Prussia 
took part three times in the dismemberment of 
Poland ; just as Prussia pounced upon Silesia ; just as 
Germany took Alsace-Lorraine, Schleswig-Holstein 
and Frankfort, and held the ring while Austria- 
Hungary bagged Bosnia and Herzegovina, and by 
the word of her Emperor, promised to do the same 
thing for Russia, when Japan declared war against 
her. We have decided that we will have no Euro- 
pean sovereignty in South America, and this side 
war, that is the end of the matter, call it the Monroe 
Doctrine or what you will. It only makes for un- 
easiness and bad temper to discuss it. It is the na- 
tional American policy. It may be right or wrong 
theoretically, but international law has nothing to 
do with it. The German professors who discuss it 
from that stand-point, are beating the air and rais- 
ing a dust in the world's international drawing- 
room. 

This German mania for translating facts back 
into philosophy and then dancing through a dis- 
cussion of theories is not understood, much less 
appreciated, by the rest of the world. We can never 
get on if we are to introduce the discussion of the 
lines of every new battle-ship by arguments as to 

457 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

the sea-worthiness of the ark. Those of us who 
control a quarter of the habitable globe, and the in- 
habitants thereof, are much too busy to discuss the 
legal aspects of the land-grabbing of the Pharaohs. 
Geography is not metaphysics, but it is wo fully hard 
for the professorial mind to grasp this. 

" Given a mouse's tail, and he will guess 
With metaphysic quickness at the mouse." 

In much the same way German statesmen and 
the German press do not understand, or do not care 
to understand, that British statesmen when they 
speak in the House of Commons, or when they go 
to the country asking increased appropriations for 
the navy, must give some reason for their request. 
There is only one reason, and that is that there is a 
growing navy across the North Sea, which, whether 
now it is or is not a menace, may be a menace to 
their ship- fed island, and they must have ships and 
men and guns enough to guard the sea-lanes which 
their foodladen ships must sail through. 

They may be awkward sometimes in their ex- 
pression of this self-evident fact, they may call their 
own fleet a necessity and the other fleet a luxury, 
but that is a negligible question of verbal manners ; 
the fact remains that their fleet is, and all the world 
knows it is, and it is laughable to discuss it, the 
prime necessity of their existence. 

As long as we Christians have given up any shred 
of belief in Christain ethics, as applicable to in- 
ternational disputes, we must live by the law of the 
strongest. We do not bless the poor in spirit, but 

458 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 

the self-confident; we do not bless the meek, but the 
proud; we do not bless the peace-makers, but those 
who urge us to prepare for war ; we do not bless 
the reviled and the persecuted and the slandered, but 
those who revolt against injustice and tyranny; we 
do not approve the cutting off of the right hand, but 
admire the mailed fist; and it is only adding to the 
confusion to raise millions for war ourselves, and 
then to present a handsomely bound copy of the 
Beatitudes to our rivals. 

I shall be wantonly misunderstood if these re- 
flections be taken as a criticism of Germany. This 
situation involves Germany in censure no more than 
other nations. It is only that Germany shows her- 
self to be somewhat childish and peevishly provin- 
cial, in girding at an unchangeable situation, either 
in South America or in the North Sea. 

This is not altogether Germany's fault. She is 
suffering from growing pains, and from grave in- 
ternal unrest. She is only just of age as a nation, 
and her constitution is so inflexible that it is a con- 
stant source of irritation. She is governed by an 
autocracy, and the two strongest parties numerically 
in her Reichstag are the party of the Catholics and 
the party of the Socialists. She has built up a tre- 
mendous trade on borrowed capital, and every gust 
of wind in the money market makes her fidgety. 
Her population increases at the rate of some 800,- 
000 a year, but her educational system produces such 
a surplus of laborers who wish to work in uni- 
forms, or in black coats and stiff collars, that there 
is a dearth of agricultural laborers, and she im- 

459 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

ports 700,000 Hungarians, Poles, Slavs, and Italians 
every year to harvest her crops. 

This same system of education has taught youths 
to think for themselves before either the mental or 
moral muscles are tough enough, with the result that 
she is the agnostic and materialistic nation of 
Europe, and her capital the most licentious and im- 
moral in Europe. 

This is the result of secular education every- 
where. Freedom of thought, yes, but not freedom 
of thought any more than freedom of morals, or 
freedom of manners, or political freedom, in exe- 
treme youth ; that only makes for anarchy political, 
mental, and moral. 

There is much undigested, not to say indigestible, 
republicanism about just now in China and in Por- 
tugal, for example; just as there are materialism 
and agnosticism in Germany and in France, not due 
to super-intellectualism but to juvenile thinking. 
The Chinese are just as fit for a republic — an actual 
republic is still a long way off — as are callow Ger- 
man youths, and notoriety-loving French students, 
for freedom to disbelieve and to destroy. No coun- 
try can long survive a majority of women teach- 
ers in the public schools, together with no Bible and 
no religious teaching there. I have no prejudices 
favoring orthodoxy, but I have a fairly wide ex- 
perience which has given me one article of a creed 
that I would go to the stake for, and that is that it 
is of all crimes the worst to give freedom political, 
moral, or religious to those who are unprepared for 
it. 

460 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE » 

Germany's taste in literature, once so natural and 
healthy, has become morbid, and Sudermann and 
Gorky and Oscar Wilde, and the rest of the un- 
healthy crew who swarm about the morgues, the 
dissecting-rooms, and the houses of assignation of 
life, the internuntiata libidinum, the leering con- 
ciliatrices of the dark streets, are her favorites 
now, There is no surer sign of mental ill-health 
than a taste for lowering literature, an appetite for 
this self -dissecting, this complacent, self-contem- 
plating form of intellectual exercise. 

This is no heated assault on German culture. It 
it a natural phase of development. Youthful candi- 
dates for worldliness all go through this porno- 
cratic stage. " The impudence of the bawd is 
modesty, compared with that of the convert," writes 
the Marquis of Halifax. The German professor 
and the German bourgeois in their Rake's Progress 
are only a little more awkward, a little more heavy- 
handed, a little coarser in speech, than others, that 
is all. The period of twenty-five years during which 
I have known Germany has developed before my 
eyes the concomitants of vast and rapid industrial 
and commercial progress, and they are: a love of 
luxury, a great increase in gambling, a materialistic 
tone of mind, a wide-spread increase of immorality, 
and a tendency to send culture to the mint, and to 
the market-place to be stamped, so that it may be 
readily exchanged for the means of soft living. 
These internal changes account to some extent for 
her restless external policy. A man's digestion has 
a good deal to do with the color of the world when 

461 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

he looks at it. There is more yellow in life from 
biliousness, than from the state of the atmosphere. 

Aside from these domestic causes there is no 
reason why Germany should take a sentimental or 
pious view of these questions of international amity. 
Her own history is development by war. " Any 
war is a good war when it is undertaken to increase 
the power of the state/ 5 said Frederick the Great. 
" Nur das Volk wird eine gesicherte Stellung in der 
Welt haben, das von kriegerischen Geiste erfiillt 
ist " (" Only that nation will hold a safe place in the 
world which is imbued with a warlike spirit ") 
writes Germany's great military philosopher Clause- 
witz. 

We took Cuba and the Philippines; England took 
India, Hong Kong, and Egypt; Japan took Korea 
and southern Manchuria ; Italy took Tripoli ; France 
took Fez; Russia took Finland and northern Man- 
churia; Austria-Hungary took Bosnia and Herze- 
govina ; and Prussia and Germany have a long list, 
including Silesia, Poland, Hanover, and Alsace- 
Lorraine. Austria-Hungary tears up the Berlin 
treaty; France, Germany, and Spain tear up the 
Algeciras treaty; Italy tears up the treaty of Paris; 
and it is part of the game that we should all hold 
up our hands, avert our faces, and thank God that 
we are not as other men are, when these things are 
done. The justifications of these actions are all of 
the most pious and penitent description. We were 
forced to do so, we say, in order to hasten the bring- 
ing in of our own specially patented and exclusive 
style of the kingdom of heaven, but outside of per- 

462 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE 55 

haps India and Egypt, and the Philippines, it would 
be hard to find to-day any trace of the promised 
kingdom. Germany, for example, had nine per 
cent, of Moroccan trade, the total of Moroccan trade 
with all countries only amounted to $27,500,000 a 
year, and she was compelled to interfere for the 
protection of her traders, forsooth! The outcome 
of the business, after an exciting situation lasting 
for months, was that Germany got a slice of terri- 
tory from France, mostly swamps, which reaches 
from the Congo to the Atlantic Ocean, and reported 
to be, by her own engineers, uninhabitable. 

It is the pleasant formula of polite statesmen and 
politicians to say, that it is a pity that Germany came 
into the world competition a hundred years too late, 
when the best colonies had been parcelled out among 
the other powers. This is a superficial view of the 
case, and misses the real point of the present envy, 
hatred, malice, and uncharitableness. Germany does 
not want colonies, and has no ability of the proper 
kind, and no willing and adventurous population to 
settle them, if she had. Prussia's dealing with 
aborigines is a subject for comic opera. 

Germany came into the modern world as a 
dreamer, as a maker of melodies, as a singer of 
songs, as a sort of post-graduate student in philoso- 
phy and in theoretical, and later applied science. 
She introduced us to classical philology, to modern 
methods of historical research, to the comparative 
study of ethnic religions, to daring and scholarly 
exegesis, to the study of the science of language. 
She discovered Shakespeare to the English ; Eduard 

463 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Matzner and Eduard Miiller, and German scholars 
in the study of phonetics, have written our English 
grammars and etymological dictionaries for us, and 
helped to lay the foundations for knowledge of our 
own language. Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, one need not 
mention more, attempted to pass beyond the bounds 
of human experience and to formulate laws for the 
process ; Schleiermacher, maintaining that Christian, 
faith is a condition of devout feeling, a fact of in- 
ward experience, an object which may be observed 
and described, had an unbounded influence in 
America, and many are the ethical discourses I have 
listened to which owed more to Schleiermacher than 
to their authors. Humboldt, Liebig, Bunsen, Helm- 
holtz, Johannes Miiller, Von Baer, Virchow, Koch, 
Diesel, even the British and American man in the 
street, with little interest in such matters, knows 
some of these names; while Schopenhauer and 
Nietzsche are symbols of revolt, whose names are 
flung into an argument by many who only know 
their names, but who fondly suppose that the one 
stands for despair and suicide, and the other for 
the joy and unbridled license of the strong man. 

Reckoning by epochs, it was only yesterday that 
Germany said to the world : " No more of this ! " 

" Hang up philosophy ! 
Unless philosophy can make a Juliet, 
Displant a town, reverse a prince's doom, 
It helps not, it prevails not : talk no more ! " 

Of a sudden our scholar threw off his gown and cap, 
and said : " I propose to play base-ball and foot-ball 

464 



"FROM envy; hatred, MALICE " 

with you, I propose to have a hand in the material 
spoils of life, I propose to have a seat at the banquet 
and to propose toasts and to be toasted! " Faust of 
a sudden left his gloomy, cobwebby laboratory, flung 
a fine cloak over his shoulders, stuck a dandy feather 
in his cap, buckled on a rapier, and began roistering 
with the best of us. We sneered and smiled at first, 
let us be frank and admit it. We did not think 
much of this new buck. We had little fear that the 
professor, even if he took off his spectacles and 
slippers and dressing-gown, and exchanged his pipe 
for a cigarette, would cut much of a figure as a 
lover, He was new to the game, we were old hands 
at it, but the first thing we knew he had given the 
world's mistress, France, a scolding, and flung her 
into a corner, a cowering heap of outraged finery; 
and she has only been safe ever since in the role of 
a sort of mistress of England on board-wages. 

A new cock in the barn-yard is never received 
with great cordiality. He must win his place and 
his power with his beak and his spurs. We all of 
us had enough to do before this fellow came along. 
We are a little jealous of him, we are all uneasier 
because he is about, and he has done so well at our 
games, now that he has indeed hung up philosophy, 
that we are not even sure that it is safe to take him 
on in a serious match. We have endeavored, there- 
fore, to keep him occupied with his own neighbors, 
to whom we have extended our best wishes and our 
moral backing, which is known as keeping the bal- 
ance of power in Europe. 

But a new Germany has come into the world. 
465 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

Germany nowadays has a large class, as have the 
rest of us, who belong to that increasing number of 
extraordinary people who want money without even 
knowing how to get on without it. The only satis- 
factory test of the right to wealth is the ability to 
get on without it. One of modern civilization's 
most dangerous pitfalls is the subversive doctrine 
that all men shall have wealth, even before they 
have proved their ability to do without it. Germany 
is gradually arriving at this puny stage of culture, 
whose beginnings may be said to date from that 
ominous year for culture, 1492, when Lorenzo di 
Medici died and Columbus discovered America! 

During all this time statesmen have insisted that 
there is no good reason why Germany and England 
should not be on good terms; gentlemen of various 
trades and professions from both countries, speak- 
ing halting English or embarrassed German, as the 
case may be, cross each other's boundaries, comment 
upon the beauties of the respective countries, and 
overeat themselves in ponderous endeavors to ap- 
pear cordial and appreciative. Mayors and alder- 
men swap stories and compliments over turtle and 
sherry, or over sauerkraut and Johannisberger ; 
bands of students visit Oxford or Heidelberg, and 
there is a chorus of praise of Goethe from one side, 
of Shakespeare from the other; and all the while 
there is an unceasing antiphonal of grimaces and 
abuse in the press. Not even when Germany exports 
her latest stage novelties to London, and pantomimic 
platitudes are dandled under colored lights, does the 
turmoil of martial talk cease. Not even Teutonic 

466 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 

lechery, in the guise of Reinhartian art, dressed in 
nothing but silence, and making faces at the British 
censor on the boards of the music-halls, avails any- 
thing. 

Of course all this is nuts to the irresponsible 
journalists, to the manufacturers of powder, guns, 
and ships, and to politicians and diplomats out of 
employment; but it is hard on the taxpayer, who 
has no dividends from manufacturers of lethal 
weapons and ships, nor from newspapers, and no 
notoriety from the self-imposed jobs of the unoffi- 
cial diplomats. 

Perhaps of all these factors the press, in its wild 
gamble to make money out of sensationalism, is 
most to blame. The press, for the sake of gain, has 
soiled and soured the milk of human kindness 
by exposing it, carelessly and unceasingly, to the 
pathogenic dangers of the dust of the street and the 
gutter. It is wholly unfitting and always demoraliz- 
ing when the priest, the politician, and the journalist 
turn their attention to private gain. Any one of 
these three who makes a great fortune out of his 
profession is damned by that fact alone. The only 
payment, beyond a living, that these three should 
look to is, respect, consideration, and the honor of 
serving the state unselfishly and wisely. The world 
will be all the happier when there are no more Shy- 
locks permitted in any of these professions. 

Germany is autocratic, philosophical, and con- 
tinental; England is democratic, political, and in- 
sular. It is hopeless to suppose that the great mass 
of the people of one country will understand the 

467 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

other, and, for this is the important point, it is 
wholly unnecessary. 

We get on best and with least friction with peo- 
ple whom we do not understand in the least. A 
man may have known and liked people with whose 
aims, opinions, employment, creeds he has the small- 
est sympathy. One may mention such diverse per- 
sonalities as John L. Sullivan, the prize-fighter, 
Cardinal Rampolla, Mr. Roosevelt, Doctor Jame- 
son, the Kaiser, President Diaz of Mexico, numer- 
ous Jew financiers, Lord Haldane the scholar-states- 
man, and a long list of professors, pious priests, 
sportsmen, and idlers, not to speak of Hindus and 
Mohammedans, Japanese and Chinese, and half a 
dozen Sioux chiefs. With these gentlemen, a few 
of many with whom one may have been upon such 
pleasant terms that they have even confided in him 
and trusted him with their secrets, one may have 
passed many pleasant hours. It probably never en- 
tered such a man's head to wonder whether they 
liked him, and he never discussed with them the 
question of his liking for them. We get on by keep- 
ing our own personalities, prejudices, and creeds in- 
tact. There is no other way. 

Other men will give even a more diverse list of 
friends and acquaintances, and never for a moment 
dream that there is any mystery in being friends 
with all. Nothing is ever gained by flattery. To 
the serious man flattery in the form of sincere 
praise makes him more responsible and only sadder, 
because he knows how much he falls below what is 
expected of him, and what he expects of himself. 

468 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE " 

Lip-flattery makes a real man feel as though his sex 
had been mistaken, he feels as though he had been 
given curling-tongs instead of a razor for his morn- 
ing toilet. These pompous flatteries that pass be- 
tween Germany and England to-day, make both 
sides self-conscious and a little ashamed to write 
and to speak them, and to hear and applaud 
them. 

America and England are shortly to celebrate 
the signing of the treaty of Ghent, which marks a 
hundred years of peace betw r een the two nations. 
We have not been without opportunities to quar- 
rel. We have w r hole classes of people in America 
who detest England, and in England there are not 
a few who do not conceal successfully their contempt 
for America, but we have had peace, and since En- 
gland, at the time of our war with Spain, said 
" Hands off ! " to the powers that wished to in- 
terfere, there has been a great increase of friendly 
feeling. But there has been little or no flattery 
passing back and forth. We have sent ambassador 
after ambassador to England who were almost more 
American than the Americans. Phelps and Lowell 
and Hay and Choate and Reid were all American 
in name, in tradition, in their successes, and in their 
way of looking at life. By their learning, their wit, 
and their criticisms, by their writing and speaking, 
by their presentation of the claims to greatness of 
our great men, by their unhesitating avowal in public 
and in private of their allegiance to the ideals of the 
republic they served, they have made clear the 
American point of view. Above all, they have 

469 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

shown their pride in their own country by acknowl- 
edging and praising the great qualities of England 
and the English. There has been no fulsome flat- 
tery, no bowing the knee to foreign idols, and what 
has been the result ? The American ambassador for 
years has been the most popular diplomatic figure in 
Great Britain. An increasing number of English- 
men even, nowadays, know T who Washington and 
Jefferson and Lincoln were, and our understanding 
of one another has grown rapidly out of this frank 
and manly attitude. We were jealous and suspicious 
a hundred years ago, as are England and Germany 
to-day, but we have changed all that by our attitude 
of good-humored independence, and by eliminating 
altogether from our intercourse the tainted delicacy 
of compliment, and the canting endearments of the 
diplomatic cocotte. We have emphasized our dif- 
ferences to the great benefit of the fine qualities that 
we have and cherish in common. 

The individual Protestant does not dislike the 
individual Papist, half so much as he dislikes his 
neighbor in the next pew, who refuses Sunday after 
Sunday to repeat the service and the creed at the 
same pace as the others, and hence to " descend into 
Hell " with the rest of the congregation. The Sioux 
chief was far more annoyed by his neighbor of the 
same tribe in the next-door reservation than he 
was by me. The pugilist scorned " Tug " Wilson, a 
brother fisticuffs sovereign, but had no feeling 
against his parish priest. Theological protagonists 
are notoriously bitter against one another, but we 
have all found many of them amiable companions 

470 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 

ourselves. It is the fellow next door, who wears 
purple socks, or who parts his hair in the middle, or 
who wears his coat-sleeves longer than our tailor 
cuts ours, or who eats his soup with a noise, or who 
has damp hands, or talks through his nose, who 
irritates us and makes us wish occasionally for the 
unlimited club-using freedom of the stone age. It 
is your first cousin with incurable catarrh, and a 
slender income who is too much with you, and 
who spoils your temper, not the anarchist orator 
who threatens your property and almost your 
life. 

' What do these Germans want?" asked a dis- 
tinguished cabinet minister of me. " They want 
consideration," I replied, " which is the most difficult 
thing in the world for the Englishman to offer any- 
body." " But, you don't mean to say," he continued, 
" that they really want to cut our throats on account 
of our bad manners?" I cannot phrase it better, 
nor can I give a more illuminating illustration of 
the misunderstanding. That is exactly the reason, 
and the paramount reason, why nations and why 
individuals attempt to cut one another's throats. 
Whatever the fundamental differences may have 
been that have led to war between nations, the tiny 
spark that started the explosion has always been 
some phase of rudeness or bad manners. 

Counting my school-days, I can remember about 
a dozen personal conflicts in which I have engaged, 
with pardonable pleasure. Not one of them was 
a question of territory, or religious difference, or of 
racial hatred ; indeed, the last one was due to being 

471 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

shouldered in the street when my equanimity was 
already disturbed by a lingering recovery from a fe- 
verish cold. 

It is, after all, the little differences that count. 
If politically and socially Germany were a little 
more sure of herself, if she were not ever omnia 
tut a timens Dido; and if England were not as ever 
quite so sure of herself, I believe intercourse be- 
tween them would be less strained. 

"The little gnat-like buzzings shrill, 
The hurdy-gurdies of the street, 
The common curses of the will — 

These wrap the cerements round our feet." 

The smothered voice, the tepid manner, the affected 
and hesitating under-statement, of a certain middlish 
class of English men and women, and, alas, their 
American imitators, who are striving toward their 
comical interpretation of the Vere de Vere manner, 
are the promoters of guffaws in private, and uneasi- 
ness in public, between nations, to a far greater ex- 
tent than the bold individualist, whose voice and 
manners, good or bad, are all his own. It is these 
small attritions that wear us down, and produce a 
sub-acid dislike between nations as between individ- 
uals. It is these that prepare the ground for a fine 
crop of misunderstandings. 

But are we not to know our neighbors the En- 
glish, the Germans, the French ? I for one consider 
that not to know German and Germany, for ex- 
ample, is nowadays not to be fully educated. Most 
of us, however, have had our nerves unstrung by the 
speeding-up process that has gone on all over the 

472 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE'* 

world of late. We have lost somewhat the power 
to know people and to let them alone at the same 
time, Goethe, one of the coolest and wisest of men, 
maintains: "Certain defects are necessary for the 
existence of individuality. One would not be pleased 
if old friends were to lay aside certain peculiar- 
ities. 

We should at least give every man as fair a 
chance to receive our good opinion as we give a pic- 
ture. We should put him in a good light before we 
criticise him. We should take time enough to do that 
to other nations, as well as to individuals. I have 
always had much sympathy for a certain Roman 
general. He was blind, and a painter who painted 
him with two large eyes, he rebuked ; another painter, 
who painted him in profile, he rewarded. 

It is, after all, something of an art to know people, 
so that the knowledge is serviceable, so that you can 
depict them to yourself and to others, not as they are 
as opposed to you, but as they are as a complement 
and help to you. 

" No human quality is so well wove 
In warp and woof, but there's some flaw in it; 
I've known a brave man fly a shepherd's cur, 
A wise man so demean himself, drivelling idiocy 
Had wellnigh been ashamed on't. For your crafty, 
Your worldly-wise man, he, above the rest, 
Weaves his own snares so fine, he's often caught in them." 

He who does not make allowances for weaknesses 
and differences in his study of human affairs is still in 
the infant class. It is a grave danger to every state 
that critics, smart or shallow, with their tu quoque 
weapons, their silly ridicule, their emphasis upon 

473 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

differences as though they were disasters, their con- 
stant failure to recognize the value of certain weak- 
nesses, their stupidity in not painting great men who 
happen to be blind, in profile, and their harping upon 
the flaws, and their neglect of the fine texture of hu- 
man qualities that are strange to them, that these 
critics are not muzzled, or, if that is impossible, dis- 
regarded. 

They make it appear that amicable relations be- 
tween nations are next to impossible. If you escape 
one danger of offending, you are sure to give offence 
in some other way, they seem to say. They are hys- 
terical in their self -consciousness, " as if a man did 
flee from a lion and a bear met him, or went in the 
house and leaned his hand on the wall and a serpent 
bit him." Sir Edward Grey writes on this subject: 
" I sometimes think that half the difficulties of for- 
eign policy arise from the exceeding ingenuity of 
different countries in attributing motives and inten- 
tions to the governments of each other. As far as I 
can observe, the press of various countries is much 
more fertile in inventing motives and intentions for 
the governments of the different countries than the 
foreign ministers of these countries are themselves. 
Foreign governments and our own government live 
from hand to mouth and have fewer deep plans than 
people might suppose. There is an old warning that 
you should not spend too much time in looking at the 
dark cupboard for the black cat that is not there, and 
I think if sometimes we were a little less suspicious 
of deep design or motive that the affairs of the world 
would progress more smoothly." 

474 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 

The trouble lies in our undertaking the impossi- 
ble, to the neglect of the obvious and the possible. 
The basic fact of nationality is a preference for our 
own ways, customs, and habits over those of other 
people. If the Chinese and Japanese, the Servians 
and Albanians, the English and the Germans liked 
one another as well as they like their own, there 
would be no nationalism to protect or to preserve. 
Such racial and traditional liking of nation for na- 
tion is impossible of achievement. No journey ings, 
speechifyings, banquets, or compliments will bring 
it about. On the contrary, I am not sure that it is 
not these very differences which cheer us and give us 
a new flavor in our pleasure in living, when we cross 
the Atlantic, the Channel, or the Rhine. What we 
should strive for is not social and racial absorption, 
but social and racial difference and distinction, with 
that pride in our own which makes for patience in 
the understanding of others. 

It is the petty, self-conscious American who hates 
the English, the provincial Englishman who hates 
the German, the socially insecure German who hates 
the Frenchman, the Englishman, and the American. 
Those of us who are poised, secure, satisfied, and at 
bottom proud of our race, our breeding, and our 
country, are neither irritable nor irritating in the 
matter of international relations. We have enough 
to do, and let others alone. Let us dine one another, 
criticise one another in the effort to improve our- 
selves, praise one another where the praise serves 
to establish our own ideals; but let us give up this 
forced and awkward courting by banquets, deputa- 

475 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

tions, and conferences. Let us study the great art 
of leaving one another alone. This is a time-hal- 
lowed doctrine. The greatest of all satirists and 
critics of manners knew this secret of successful in- 
tercourse with one another. One of the characters 
in the " Frogs " of Aristophanes is made to say : 
" Don't come trespassing upon my mind ; you have 
a house of your own." Propinquity does not neces- 
sarily entail intimacy; as the world grows smaller, 
more and more people think so, perhaps often 
enough only to escape from themselves, a favorite 
form of elopement these days. Some men are fed 
by solitude and starved by too much companionship, 
and the same is true of nations. You cannot control 
others till you have learned to control yourself, or 
save another till you yourself are saved, and most 
of us had better be about that business. 

It is England's business to know just now, and 
to some extent ours, how many ships Germany is 
building and how many men she has in training to 
man them ; but it is not in the least anybody's busi- 
ness to question her motives or to attempt to dictate 
her policy. It is our business to shut up, and to build 
ships and to train men according to our notions of 
what is necessary for safety in case of an explosion. 
We should be about our father's business, not about 
our brother's business. 

It is shallow thinking and lack of knowledge of 
the men and women of stranger countries, and above 
all that terrible itching to be doing something, which 
lead to these futile excursions and this silly talk. 

Can anything be more maudlin than to suppose 
476 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE " 

that international sensitiveness, that commercial ri- 
valries, that tariff discriminations, that territorial 
misunderstandings, are to be soothed and smoothed 
away, by dissertations upon how much we owe to one 
another in matters of culture? Think what we owe 
to Goethe and Lessing, to Spinoza and Kant, to 
Heine and Mozart and Wagner and Beethoven, re- 
iterates the Englishman; think what we owe to 
Shakespeare and Milton, to Byron and Shelley and 
Scott, to Lister and Newton, answers the German! 
Who can go to war with the countrymen of Racine 
and Moliere and Pascal and Montesquieu and Des- 
cartes ? repeats the friend of France ; and by others 
are trumpeted the fraternal relations that we ought 
to cultivate with the countrymen of Dante, or of Eu- 
ripides, ^Eschylus, and Sophocles. This is phantom 
friendship, and we all know in our heart of hearts, 
that we would fight any or all of them at the drop 
of a handkerchief, if they hurt our feelings, ruffled 
our national pride, or maltreated in a foreign land 
the meanest of our racial brothers. Straining after 
such artificial bonds of union is as irritating as it is 
unreal. 

Germany has few heartier admirers of Bismarck 
than am I ; England has few franker friends of her 
great gentlemen in peace and war than am I ; I have 
read and profited by French literature far more than 
from anything America has produced; if I can write 
so that here and there a brother has profited there- 
from, I owe it to the Frenchmen I have studied ; but 
these are all nothing as compared with my heart's 
real allegiances. There is a gulp in my throat when 

477 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

I dream of that weary, misunderstood, but patient 
and humble peace-maker, who held the scales be- 
tween the millions of my own countrymen, shooting 
and stabbing one another to death fifty years ago. 
No other man can be quite like him to me; he re- 
mains my master of men, as is Lee my ideal of the 
Happy Warrior. I understand the grim humor in 
his sad eyes, I love that lined face, cut from the 
granite of self-control, that tamed volcano face, 
seamed and scarred by the lava of his trials and his 
tears; I can see how the illuminating and concilia- 
tory anecdotes were his relief from the pain of an 
aching heart ; my muscles harden and my nerves tin- 
gle as I recall the puppet politicians and fancy self- 
advertising warriors who crucified him slowly. The 
country and the people that Lincoln believed in, I 
must believe in and fight for too. Washington was 
an Englishman and baptized us, but Lincoln was an 
American who officiated at our first communion as 
a united people. 

I ask no Englishman, no German, no Frenchman 
to agree with me, but I ask them to leave me alone 
with my dead, to leave me in peace with my living 
problems, to force no artificial friendships upon me, 
and thus to let our respect for one another increase 
naturally. 

Has the Englishman, has the German, no sanctu- 
aries to be left undisturbed; no heart-strings that 
are not to be fumbled at by busy fingers; no per- 
sonal dignities to be shrouded from investigations; 
no sweet silences of sorrow that are barred to 
foreign mourners? If he have not, then all this 

478 



"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 

clamor at the doors of national privacy is well 
enough ; but let them remember that when nations 
lose their dignity and their racial pride, there is sure 
to follow the squabbling and the jealousy, the rough 
speech and vulgar manners, of the domestic circle, 
in the same plight of spiritual shamelessness. The 
best that any of us learn is to be a little more patient, 
a little more charitable, a little more careful of the 
dignity of others in our own homes, or abroad, and 
then the light goes out ! 



479 



XI 
CONCLUSION 

CRITICISM is temptingly easy when it con- 
sists, as it so often does, in merely noting 
what is different, or what is not there. Help- 
ful criticism I take to be the discovery of what is 
there, and its revelation, with an examination of its 
history, its truth, and its value. That kind of criti- 
cism is close to creation itself, and few there are suffi- 
ciently self-sacrificing to endow and to train them- 
selves to undertake it. 

It makes life very complicated to think too much 
about it, but to take a step further, and to attempt 
to apply logic to life, that way madness lies. It is of 
the very essence of life that things are never as they 
ought to be, but only as they can be for the time 
being. We may be optimistic enough to believe that 
this is a good world, but it is none the less true that 
unbending virtue seldom receives the temporal re- 
wards for which most of us are striving, and with 
which alone most of us are content. We are forced 
to doubt, therefore, the goodness which finds life 
easy and comfortable, and since we must still at all 
hazards be charitable in our judgments of one an- 
other, we become, most of us, opportunists in 
morals. 

480 



CONCLUSION 

In dealing with the men, manners, affairs, and the 
soul of a stranger people, therefore, one must use 
what experience, knowledge, good-humor, and im- 
partiality one has, without assumption of superior- 
ity, without making high demands, and without ceas- 
ing to be at least as opportunist as we are at home. 
Because things are different, they are not necessarily 
better or worse, and if certain things are not there, 
it is perhaps because they do not belong there. Above 
all, we should refrain from applying a stern logic 
to the life of another country which we never use 
in measuring our own. 

The whole north of Germany is a flat, barren 
plain, with the Elbe, the Oder, the Weser flowing 
west and north. The north of Germany on a raised 
map looks like a vast sea-shore, and so it is. To the 
south a great river, the Rhine, pierces its way from 
Frankfort through a beautiful gorge in the moun- 
tains, and has its source near that of the Danube. 
Barbarossa called this river, " that royal street." 
This sea-shore is cultivated and populous ; this river 
has been made a great commercial highway. Co- 
logne, one hundred and fifty miles from the sea, is 
now a seaport; Strasburg, three hundred miles in- 
land, can receive boats of six hundred tons; and the 
tributary river, the Main, has been deepened so that 
now Frankfort receives steamers from the Rhine. 
Three quarters of the through trade of Holland is 
German water-borne trade. Now the Dortmund- 
Ems canal, which is one hundred and sixty-eight 
miles long, and can be used by ships of a thousand 
tons, gives an outlet, via the Rhine, at Emden. All 

481 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

this is the work of a patient, persistent, and economi- 
cal people working under great natural disadvan- 
tages. 

As compared with America this is an unfruitful 
land, and, as I have noted, surrounded on all sides 
by powerful enemies. In 1902 Traugott Miiller es- 
timated the value of Germany's production of wheat, 
potatoes, vegetables — the products of the gardens 
and the fields, in short — at $605,000,000; the pro- 
duction of beef, mutton, pork at $669,500,000; of 
the dairies at $406,000,000; of cotton, sugar, al- 
cohol, wine, and wood at $322,000,000; or a total of 
of $2,002,000,000. The United States is seventeen 
times as large, but by no means seventeen times as 
productive. 

Germany, again, is divided into a number of 
states, all, with the exception of Prussia, with its 
population of 40,000,000 out of the total of 65,- 
000,000, comparatively small. These states are not 
merely divided by legal and geographical lines, but 
by traditions, different ruling families, religion, 
tastes, habits, and manners, and even geologically. 
Bernhard Cotta, writing of Germany, says : " Geo- 
logically there is a Spain, an England, a Sweden, a 
Russia, a France, but no Germany." They are dif- 
ferent individuals, not different members of the same 
family. They have been cemented together by coer- 
cion. 

Over this whole country for three hundred years 
have swept all the fighting men of Europe. Until 
1870 it was a tournament ground for the Swedes, 
Russians, French, Dutch, Belgians, Italians, Hun- 

482 



CONCLUSION 

garians, English, and the various German states. It 
was shot over, till it is a wonder that there are any 
young birds, not to speak of old cocks and hens 
left, to begin with over again. 

A feature of the political situation, which scarcely 
enters into political calculations in America, is the 
sharp division between Protestants and Catholics, 
with a political party of Catholics numbering one 
fourth of the total members, in the Reichstag. In 
1905 there were 37,646,852 Protestants and 22,- 
109,644 Catholics in Germany, the Roman Catholics 
being in a majority in Baden, Bavaria, and Alsace- 
Lorraine. In the past these religious differences 
have entailed all the most repulsive features of war, 
waged to the point of extermination. " Lieber Rom 
als Liberal," is still a punning war-cry marking the 
dislike of Rome and the fear of Socialism. 

With us religion has become largely an organized 
attempt, using charity as patronage, to reconcile 
piety and plenty, with the result that with the excep- 
tion of the Catholic Church dealing with the lately 
arrived immigrants, and the Methodists and Baptists 
dealing with the ignorant masses, black and white, 
in the South, religion in the sense of an organized 
church has little hold upon the people, especially in 
the large cities. 

In America the indifference to religion is the re- 
sult of suspicion. The congregations are too largely 
black-coated and white-collared, and the lay officers 
of the churches much too solemnly sleek and serenely 
solvent to attract the weak, the unfortunate, the 
sorrowing, and the sinner. The mere appearance of 

483 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

the congregation in a prosperous Protestant church 
in an American city is a mockery of Christianity. 
Any man who preaches to men who can own a seat 
in God's house is a craven opportunist. Until the 
doors of the churches are open all the week, and the 
seats in the churches free, to claim that the Christ is 
there is little short of blasphemy. It is no wonder 
that those who need Him most, never dream of seek- 
ing for Him in these ecclesiastical clubs. 

In Germany half-baked thinking, following upon, 
and as the result of, the barracks and corporal meth- 
ods of education, have turned the Protestant popu- 
lation from the churches. The slovenly and patchy 
omniscience of the partly educated, leads them to 
believe that they know enough not to believe. Re- 
nan, though a doubter himself, saw the weakness of 
this form of disbelief when he wrote : " There are in 
reality but few people who have a right not to believe 
in Christianity." 

The people living upon this ethnographical chess- 
board have been for centuries rather tribal than na- 
tional, and are still rather philosophical than political, 
rather idealistic than practical, rather dreamy than 
adventurous. To organize this population for self- 
support and self-defence, to ignore differences, racial 
and religious, to stamp out the jealousies of small 
rulers, required severe measures, and we are all 
learning to-day that democracies are seldom severe 
with themselves. A tyrannical autocracy, led by 
the Great Elector, Frederick the Great, and Bis- 
marck, produced from this welter of discord the as- 
tonishing results of to-day. 

484 



CONCLUSION 

We have to-day, in an area of 208,780 square 
miles, 5,604 square miles representing the lately con- 
quered territory of Alsace-Lorraine, a population of 
64,903,423, of whom 1,028,560 are subjects of 
foreign powers. To defend this area there are to 
be, according to figures estimated even as this vol- 
ume goes to press, a million men under arms in the 
army and navy. Their enormous progress in trade, 
in industry, in ship-building, is set out in full in every 
year-book, for the curious to ponder. In so short a 
time, on so poor a soil, in such a restricted space, 
with such a past of distress and disaster, and dealing 
with such conflicting interests, a like success in na- 
tion-building is unparalleled. 

Industrial and martial beehive though it would 
seem to be, there are provided for the native and 
the foreigner feasts of music, of art, and of study 
that cost little. There are quiet streams, lovely, 
lonely walks, and quaint towns that are nests of ar- 
chaeological interest. In Weimar, in Stuttgart, in 
Schwerin, in Diisseldorf, in Karlsruhe, not to men- 
tion Munich, Leipsic, Dresden, Berlin, Frankfort, 
Hamburg, there are centres of culture. The best 
that the mind of man creates is still spread out there 
as of yore for whomsoever will to partake, but ever 
in less abundance and with less enthusiasm. And 
these names are a mere fraction of the number of 
such places. 

The rivalries between the states is now to a large 
extent an elevating rivalry of culture, dotting the 
map of Germany with resting-places for the curious, 
the scholarly, or the sentimental traveller. You may 

485 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

have plain living and high thinking in scores of the 
cities and towns of Germany, and you will be con- 
sidered neither an outcast nor an eccentric; indeed, 
you will find no small part of the population your 
companions. 

You may stroll for miles on the banks of that tiny 
stream the Zschopau, and expect to see sprites and 
nymphs, so hidden are its windings; and where in 
all the world will a handkerchief cover an Ulm, 
an Augsburg, a Rothenburg, Ansbach, Nuremberg, 
Wiirzburg, with their wealth of associations? 

The Fugger family, of Augsburg, tell us again that 
there is nothing new in the world. Five hundred 
years ago they were millionaires. One of these Fug- 
ger s had a voice even in the election of Charles V, 
and we are still hard at it trying to keep our Fuggers 
from meddling in politics. Another Fugger, Mar- 
cus by name, wrote a capital book on the horse in 
the sixteenth century, and at the last horse-show at 
Olympia, in 19 12, a Fugger came over from Ger- 
many and took away the first prize for officers' 
chargers. So far flung was their fame as money- 
lenders that usury was called " Fuggerei " ! 

Heirs of great houses got out of hand then as now, 
and Duke Albert III of Bavaria married Agnes 
Bernauer, the barber's daughter, and even the Arch- 
duke Ferdinand of Austria ran off with Fraulein 
Welser. One citizen of Augsburg fitted out a squad- 
ron to take possession of Venezuela, which had been 
given him by the Emperor Charles V. For some 
reason the squadron did not sail ; Lord Salisbury and 

486 



CONCLUSION 

President Cleveland could have told this adventurous 
Augsburger that he was better off at home ! 

Bishop Boniface, of Wurzburg, was an En- 
glishman, and his father was a wheelwright. He put 
cart-wheels in his coat-of-arms, and they have re- 
mained to this day in the arms of the town, a fine 
reminder to snobbery that ancestry only explains, it 
cannot exalt. 

" Pigmies are pigmies still, though perch'd on Alps, 
And pyramids are pyramids in vales. ,, 

The atmosphere in these towns is one of repose. 
They are still wise enough to know that the miracu- 
lous improvements in speed brought about by steam 
and electricity have not shortened the journey of the 
soul to heaven by one second. They know that 
Socrates on a donkey really goes faster than Solly 
Goldberg in his sixty-horse-power motor-car. They 
are suspicious of the new cosmopolitan creed, that 
successful advertising endows a man with eternal 
life. Countless political quacks have been carica- 
tured, advertised, and cinematographed into famil- 
iarity, but wise men still read Plato and Aristotle. 
The penny press has not convinced them that popu- 
larity is immortality; they recognize popularity as 
merely glory paid in pennies. They partake to some 
extent of the patience of the Oriental. They sus- 
pect, as most men of wide intellectual experience do, 
that the man who cannot wait must be a coward at 
bottom, afraid of himself, or of the world, or of 
God. 

This is wholly true of many Germans, despite the 
487 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

clang of arms, the noise of steam-hammers, the 
shrieking locomotives, the puffing steamers, the 
clinking of their gold, and the shouting of their 
pedlers, now scattered all over the world. It is this 
combination, in the same small area, of noise and 
repose; of political subserviency at home and sabre- 
rattling abroad; of close organization at home and 
colonizing inefficiency abroad; of moral and in- 
tellectual freedom, one might almost call it moral 
and intellectual anarchy these days, and at the same 
time submission to a domestic and social tyranny 
unknown to us, that makes even a timid author feel 
that he is discovering the Germans to his country- 
men, so little do they know of this side of German 
life. 

They are not at all what the Americans and the 
English think they are. They want peace, and we 
think they want war. The huge armaments are 
intended to frighten us, just as were the grotesquely 
ugly masks of the Chinese warriors. They intend to 
frighten us all with their 850,000 soldiers, their 
great fleet, their air-ships and aeroplanes, and when 
they go to Agadir again they hope to be able to 
stay there till their demands are granted. They 
are the last comers into the society of nations and 
they mean to insist upon recognition. But this de- 
mand is an artificial one so far as the great mass 
of Germans is concerned. It is the Prussian con- 
queror, and the small class, officer, official and royal, 
representing that conqueror, who are determined 
upon this course. They have unified Germany, 
they have made the laws and forced obedience to 

488 



CONCLUSION 

them; and the heavily taxed, hard-driven, politi- 
cally powerless people are helpless. 

Nowhere has socialistic legislation been so cun- 
ningly and skilfully used for the enslavement of the 
people. No small part of every man's wages is paid 
to him in insurance; insurance for unemployment, 
for accident, sickness, and old age. There is but 
faint hope of saving enough to buy one's freedom, 
and if the slave runs away he leaves, of course, all 
the premiums he has paid in the hands of his master. 
A general uprising is guarded against by a redoubt- 
able force of officials, officers, and soldiers, whose 
very existence depends upon their defence of and 
upholding of the state tinder its present laws and 
rulers. 

Our grandfathers and fathers, some of them, 
talked and read of Saint-Simon, of Fourier, Robert 
Owen, Maurice Kingsley, and the Brook Farm ex- 
periment, and believed, no doubt, that the dawn of 
the twentieth century would have extracted at least 
some balm from these theories for the healing of 
our social woes. They would rub their eyes in 
amazement were they to awake in 19 12 to find more 
armed men, more ships of war, more fighting, more 
strikes and trade disputes, than ever before. Above 
all, they would be puzzled to find the nation which 
is most advanced in the application of the theory 
of state socialism with the largest army, the heaviest 
taxation, and the second most formidable fleet. 

The library in which, as a small boy, I was per- 
mitted to browse, where I read those wonderful 
Black Forest Stories and my first serious novel, On 

489 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

the Heights, contained a bust of Goethe, and on the 
shelves were Fichte, Freytag, Spielhagen, Strauss, 
and a miscellaneous collection of German authors 
grave and gay, or perhaps melancholy were a better 
word, for even now I should find it hard to point 
to a German author who is distinctively gay. No 
visitor to that library, and they numbered many 
distinguished visitors, American and foreign, from 
Emerson and Alcott and George Macdonald to 
others less well known, dreamed that the serene 
marble features of Goethe would be replaced by the 
granite fissures of the face of Bismarck; and that 
Auerbach's Black Forest Stories would be less 
known than Albert Ballin's fleet of mercantile ships. 
As I dream myself back to that big chair wherein 
I could curl up my whole person, and still leave 
room for at least two fair-sized dogs, I see as in 
no other way the almost unbelievable change that 
has come over Germany, The Black Forest Stories, 
Hammer and Anvil, The Lost Manuscript, Werther, 
Fichte, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Strauss, Heine 
were Germany then; Bismarck, Ballin, and Krupp 
are Germany now. Germany was Hamlet then; 
Germany is Shylock, Shylock armed to the teeth, 
now. 

No nation can change in one generation, as has 
Germany, by the natural development of its innate 
characteristics; such a change must be forced and 
artificial to take place in so short a time. This is 
not only the internal danger to Germany itself, but 
the danger to all those superficial observers who 
point to Germany as having solved certain social and 

490 



CONCLUSION 

economic problems. She has not solved them by 
healthy growth into better ways ; she has suppressed 
them, strangled them, suffocated them. 

The heroes and heroines of my Black Forest 
Stories have been rudely stuffed into the uniforms 
of officials, soldiers, factory hands, and Red Cross 
nurses. The toy-shops have been developed, on 
borrowed capital, into ship-building yards and fac- 
tories for guns and ammunition. The dreamer in 
dressing-gown and slippers has been forced into the 
cap and apron of the workman. The small sover- 
eigns have been frightened into allegiance to the 
war lord, whose shadow falls upon every corner of 
Germany. 

In this new scheme of things it soon became 
evident, that the individual was incompetent to take 
care of himself along lines best suited to the plans 
of his new conqueror, therefore part of his earnings 
were taken from all alike to provide against ac- 
cident, sickness, unemployment, and old age, and 
thus bind him fast to the chariot of his warrior lord. 
Germany, having given up the belief that the salva- 
tion of her own soul was of prime importance, be- 
came suspiciously concerned about the souls and 
bodies of the people. We are all to some extent 
following her example. The wise among us are 
sad, the capitalist and his ally the demagogue are 
seen everywhere all smiles, rubbing their hands, for 
the more people are made to believe that they can 
be, and ought to be, taken care of, the more the 
machinery is put into their hands, the more plunder 
comes their way, the more indispensable they are, 

491 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

The great majority of people who write or 
speak of Germany applaud this situation; let me 
frankly say, what everybody will be saying in 
twenty-five years, I deplore it. It is a purely artifi- 
cial, incompetent, and dreary solution. Even Ham- 
let were better than Shylock. 

Fortunately there is also a large and increasing 
class in Germany who distrust the situation. They 
point to the fact that technical education is produc- 
ing an army of dingy artisans, who turn out the 
cheap and nasty by the million, an education which 
chokes idealism and increases the growing flippancy 
in matters of faith and morals ; they sneer, and well 
they may, at the manufactured art, the carpenter's 
Gothic architecture, the sickly literature, the decay- 
ing interest in scholarship; they find fewer and 
fewer candidates for exploration and colonization; 
they rankle under the series of diplomatic ineptitudes 
since Bismarck; they see France, Russia, and En- 
gland antagonized and leagued against them, and 
their own allies, Austria-Hungary and Italy, in a 
confused state of squabble with their neighbors ; they 
are nervous and disquieted by the financial and in- 
dustrial conditions; they condemn whole-heartedly 
the political caste system by which much of the best 
material in Germany is barred from the councils 
and the diplomatic and executive activities of the 
nation ; there are not a few who would welcome an 
inconclusive war that would, they think, put an end 
to this system, and make the ruler and the officials 
responsible to the people; they wish to open the 
doors of this governmental, legislative, educational, 

492 



CONCLUSION 

industrial hot-house, and give the nation a chance 
to grow naturally in the open air. 

The policy of making other people afraid of you 
must have an end, the policy of making others re- 
spect and like you can have no end. There is no 
question which is the natural law of national de- 
velopment. Neither for the individual nor for a 
nation is it wholesome to increase antagonisms and 
to lessen the conciliatory points of contact with the 
world. 

Many of the weaknesses, much of the strength 
of Germany are artificial. They have not grown, 
they have been forced. The very barrenness of the 
soil, the ring of enemies, the soft moral and social 
texture of the population, have, so their little knot 
of rulers think, made necessary these harsh, arti- 
ficial forcing methods. 

The outstanding proof of the artificiality of this 
civilization is its powerlessness to propagate. Ger- 
mans transplanted from their hothouse civilization 
to other countries cease to be Germans ; and nowhere 
in the world outside Germany is German civilization 
imitated, liked, or adopted. The German is non- 
plussed to find the Pole in the East, the Frenchman 
in the West, the Dane in the North, scoffing at his 
alte Kultur, as he calls it, and he is irritated beyond 
measure by the German from America, who returns 
to the Vaterland to criticise, to sneer, and to thank 
God that he is an American, not a German citizen. 
Germans become English citizens, no Englishmen 
become Germans; millions of Germans have be- 
come Americans, no Americans become Germans. 

493 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

No other population would be amenable to the Prus- 
sian methods that have made Germany, nor is there 
anywhere in the world a people demanding Prussian 
methods, while there are millions under the Prussian 
yoke who hate it. 

The German rhetoric to the effect that Germany 
is to save the world by Teutonizing the world, is 
laughable. Prussia is the ventriloquist behind this 
half-hearted boast. 

Werther, and Faust, and Lohengrin, are far more 
real than those scarecrows autocracy, bureaucracy, 
and militarism, triplets of straw, premature births, 
not destined to live, of which Germany boasts to- 
day as the most precocious children in the world. 
They are just that, precocious children, teaching the 
pallid religion of dependence upon the state and 
enforcing the anarchical morality of man's despair 
of himself. Our descendants will have Werther and 
Faust and Lohengrin, as the companions of their 
dreams at least, when that autocracy shall have been 
blown to the winds, when that bureaucracy shall 
have dried up and wasted away, when that exag- 
gerated militarism shall be but bleaching bones and 
dust. 

Who has not lived in Germany as a house of 
dreams, seen the Valkyrie race by, heard the swan 
song, wept with Werther and with Marguerite, 
smiled cynically with Mephistopheles, languished 
with the Palm Tree and the Pine of Heine ; who has 
not sat at the feet of Germany as a philosopher, and 
traced the very fissures of his own brain in follow- 
ing thinking into thought ; but who in all the world 

494 



CONCLUSION 

longs for this new Germany of the barracks, the 
corporal and the pedler? Germania as a malicious 
vestal clad in horrid armor and making mischief in 
the world is a very present danger ; Germania with 
a torch lighting the world to salvation is a phantom, 
a ghost, seen by hasty and nervous observers, who 
rush out to proclaim an adventure that may excite 
a passing interest in themselves. Her methods to- 
day are solution by suffocation; no wonder those 
of us who loved her in our youth see in her a ghost 
to-day. I am thankful that I was her pupil when 
she had other things to teach, when she wore other 
robes, when she was modest, and not snatching at 
the trident of Neptune, nor clutching at the casque 
of Mars. 

" Wir wissen zu viel, wir wollen zu wenig," be- 
came the national complaint, and Germany has at- 
tempted to transform herself. She has succeeded 
in the transformation, but the transformation is not 
a success. Even that learned English friend of Ger- 
many, Lord Haldane, does not see, or will not see, 
that a people thinking themselves into action, instead 
of developing into action naturally, through action, 
must suffer from the artificiality of the process. 
Lord Haldane applauds their thought-out organiza- 
tion in industrial, commercial, and military matters, 
but he fails to mention the squandering of individual 
capacity and energy that has resulted in Germany's 
growing dependence upon a wooden bureaucracy. 
Organization is only good as a means; it is stupefy- 
ing as an end. Germany has organized herself into 
an organization, and is the most overgoverned 

495 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

country in the world. What every democracy of 
free men wants is not as much, but as little, or- 
ganization as possible compatible with economical 
administration of industry, the army, the navy, and 
the affairs of the state. You can think out a game 
of chess, but you cannot think out life ahead of the 
living of it without cramping it and finally killing it. 
Life is to live, not to think, after all. Neither a na- 
tion nor an individual has ever thought out the way 
to power. This is where the metaphysician invariably 
fails when he mistakes thinking for living, when he 
mistakes organization, which can never be more than 
a mould for life, for life itself. To plan an army 
is not to produce one, however good the plan; even 
to plan a campaign, once you have an army, is to 
court disaster unless there is a living man to thrust 
the plan aside when the emergencies arise that make 
up the whole of life, but have nothing to do with 
organization. 

If all men were tailors, or lawyers, or farmers, 
or miners, then we could think out an organization 
into which they would fit, but unfortunately for the 
metaphysician, all men are not categories; all men 
are men ! In like manner, if all men were cases, then 
government by lawyers would be successful, but 
men and women are neither categories nor cases. 
It is purely fantastic, the mere reasoned confusion 
of the philosopher, to point to Spinoza, Kant, and 
Hegel and their successors as the originators of 
Germany's progress. If Germany had developed 
along those lines, she would be something quite 
different from what she is. The Great Elector, 

496 



CONCLUSION 

Frederick the Great, Napoleon, and Bismarck made 
Germany, and her philosophers and pedants are only- 
responsible for the softness that made it possible. 
Metaphysicians and lawyers have their place, but 
they will inevitably ruin any people whom they are 
permitted to govern. 

The reader will perhaps look back through these 
pages to discover a contradiction. He will seem to 
find evidence that Germany's position in the world 
called for just this present Germany, which is a 
factory town with a garden attached, surrounded 
by an armed camp. I deny the contradiction. I 
have tried to analyze and to give the reasons for 
Germany's development along these meretricious 
and disappointing lines, but I am the last to admit 
that the outcome is satisfactory, or that the rest of 
the world should look to Germany to point out the 
way of salvation. A steaming orchid-house is not 
the place to go to learn to grow the fruits of the 
earth in their due season for the nourishment of a 
free people. You will find some brilliantly colored 
flowers there, in the gay uniforms of the artificial 
tropics, but they shrink and shrivel in the open air. 
They have been trained to grow luxuriantly in this 
stifling atmosphere, but they feed no one, please no 
one, who will not consent to live in a glass house 
with them. 

Because a people is blindfolded, its preachers and 
pedagogues gagged, its officials subservient, is all 
the more reason why they should be easily led, but 
no reason at all for supposing that they will lead 
anybody else. 

497 



GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 

I have said here and there that I have learned 
much, and that we all have much to learn from 
Germany. I permit myself to repeat it She has 
shown us that the short-cut to the governing of a 
people by suppression and strangulation results in a 
dreary development of mediocrity. She has proved 
again that the only safety in the world for either an 
individual or a nation is to be loved and respected, 
and in these days no one respects slavery or loves 
threats. 

From an American point of view, any sacrifice, 
any war, were better than the domination of the 
Prussian methods of nation-making. No nation 
should be by its traditions and its ideals more ready 
to arm itself, and to keep itself armed if necessary 
for years, against the possibility of the transference 
of such methods to the American continent than the 
United States of North America. 

"Theuer ist mir der Freund, doch audi den Feind kann ich 
niitzen," 
Zeigt mir der Freund, was ich kann, lehrt mir der Feind was 
ich soil," 

writes Schiller. 

We Americans have much to learn from both 
our friends and our enemies. We have both in Ger- 
many, and we should cultivate the temper of mind 
which profits by the encouragement of our friends 
and the criticism of our foes. 



498 



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